

## PEACEFUL SUNDAYS

### by

### Jimmy Pete

Peaceful Sundays

by Jimmy Pete

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2016 Jimmy Pete

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 9781370498871

To Cannabis Sativa

"I will not become that which you worship," he said to the heavens. "Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion."

PROLOGUE

"When do I get my money?" Mrs Kingery was a bear of a woman, with giant mottled fists that looked like bricks of raw pork sausage.

The two women talked about Da'Ndre without looking at him, like he was a ghost that wasn't really present.

"This will make seventeen children for you, Mrs Kingery." The social services lady looked like she could have been an assistant librarian or a crossing guard, but she wasn't smart enough, so they put her in charge of children's fates and futures instead. "It takes two full months before you get the first direct deposit."

"I ain't takin him outa here without no money up front." Mrs Kingery crossed her varicose veins and fumbled a Winston from a hard pack. She flipped the lid of a classic chrome Zippo that said HARLEY DAVIDSON, corrupting the office atmosphere with its nauseating aroma of cheap lighter fluid. Before she rolled the wheel on the flint, she made a poker face at the socialist bureaucrat. "I ain't runnin no goddamn charity."

"You can't smoke in here, Mrs Kingery."

"So call the fucking cops." Mrs Kingery flicked her Zippo and lit the cigarette. She sucked her cheeks concave and exhaled a bitter gray cloud. "Free country. You don't like it, you can come over to my house and take all your goddamn rug rats back."

"Ursus, please. Me and you, we go way back. This boy is twelve years old. That sets you up for six full years of solid income from the county."

"I need cash now."

The social services lady heaved a sigh. "I'll go see if I can get you some emergency funding." She got up from her desk and waddled away, revealing a fluorescent lime Post-It smashed flat over the bullseye on the ass end of her drum-tight skirt.

Mrs Kingery leaned over and watched that green Post-It disappear around a corner. As soon as she knew she was alone with Da'Ndre, the big woman stung the boy hard with a nasty slap across his cheek, knocking the red-stained bandage on Da'Ndre's forehead cockeyed. "Don't you never give me no shit, you hear me, boy?"

Da'Ndre rubbed his stinging face with one hand, restored the bandage with his other hand, and wiped a tear from his affected eye with a dip of his cheek against a shrug of his t-shirt. "Yes, ma'am."

She slapped him backhanded, stinging Da'Ndre's other cheek. "Quit yer cryin before you get us in trouble!" she yelled in a whisper.

Da'Ndre rubbed his head and tried to hold his emotions in.

The woman reached over onto the bureaucrat's desk and bent the ear of the file folder up so she could read the label. "D-a-apostrophe-N-d-r-e," she said. "That your name?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"How you say it?"

"DON-dray," the boy said.

She examined the label. "Duh-ON-dray," she murmured. "What a stupid name." Then she tossed the file back onto the bureaucrat's desk, turned, and throttled the lad's throat with her talons. "Don't you _never_ call me _momma_ , ya hear me boy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"My name is _Mrs Kingery_. And you will do what I say because I'm all you got in this world."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Your daddy is in prison and your momma is dead, boy."

"My momma ain't dead!" Da'Ndre said. "She's declared unfit is all!"

"They're just telling you that because they don't wanna hear you cry like a baby," the bearlike woman said. "Your momma was buried with a bullet in the back."

Da'Ndre tried to inhale through a noseful of snot, but had to open his mouth to gasp for a breath. "How do you know that?"

"Quit yer whimperin! Here she comes."

The paper pusher came back into the office carrying a fluorescent lime green Post-It in her fingers. She held it out toward Mrs Kingery.

The grizzly old gold digger withdrew from the Post-It in horror, like it was a snake that the bureaucrat had farted on.

"I wrote down a phone number for you to call," the bureaucrat said, fanning the green paper in front of her client's nose. Then she noticed the little boy crying. She knelt down beside him. "What's wrong, honey?"

"Oh he's cryin because I told him what happened to his momma and daddy," Mrs Kingery said, standing and grabbing the boy's upper arm. "I'll go ahead and take him right now. You just make sure you get all that money put into my account by close of business on Monday or I'm bringin him back."

And then the witch dragged Da'Ndre away.

CHAPTER ONE

### THE SABBATH

It could have been the flashing blue police strobes in the rear view mirror that started Da'Ndre Goldstein's death spiral. Or it could have been Da'Ndre's own life choices.

It could have been the busted taillight. Or it could have been decisions made by his mother and father, a long time ago.

It could have been the borrowed license plates. Or it could have been the drunk teenage white girls that got their thighs sliced open on the Rumbly Wumbly Ride for Toddlers.

It could have been destiny. Or it could have been a six thousand-year-old karma tsunami, snowballing its way down through the generations from Adam & Eve or monkeys.

Or it could have just been the color of his skin.

The Galaxie was an old Detroit road boat with worn-out shocks and creaky springs, probably 25 to 30 years old. It would have floated like a dream if only Rupert the retard hadn't attempted to balance the wheels. It was covered with dribs and drabs of flicked paint, an abstract paint job, like it had been driven through a Jackson Pollack car wash that pissed primaries out of a gay rainbow. It was a veritable orgy of ejaculated color. It had four-forty air conditioning because the windows were stuck open at various heights and angles. It had an antique cassette deck and a pair of Jensen six-by-nines mounted in the rear. Those speakers were so powerful, Da'Ndre could turn the jams up loud enough to eliminate the screech of the v-belt strangling the water pump under the hood.

Da'Ndre had started his road trip off by fishing three dusty cassettes out from under the driver's seat. He had shoved the first one in without even looking at the label. As soon as he heard the intro, he knew it was one of his daddy's old Motown mixes.

He had discovered that the cruise control and all of the electric seat servos worked if he wiggled the buttons just right. He had set the cruise on five under the limit to stay below the radar. He had tilted himself back in the seat and had been belting duets with Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Al Green, and Luther Vandross. The wind was blowin, a doobie was burnin, and his head was reminiscin about his past: a _curriculum vitae_ which any random parole officer might call "checkered," but which Da'Ndre himself considered to be more like a game of chess. A game of chess he was always playing against The Man.

He had been driving on autopilot. The dark plains of Georgia made waves as sexy as the pods of his Rumbly Wumbly. His mind was engaged in a mental review of his own life experiences, flowing past like Macy's parade on Thanksgiving Day.

For nearly an entire decade, Da'Ndre had been the Rumbly Wumbly's proud Head Nigga In Charge, but then suddenly he was out on his ass, after them girls got their milky white thighs cut open. It was either because they were drunk and unhooked the safety bar and stood up, or because some shiftless nigger neglected to hook the safety bar, or _intended_ to leave it unhooked, depending on whose story you believe.

Da'Ndre had just merged the old Galaxie between a couple of struggling 18-wheelers, and was headed north out of Shannon County when the flashing blues slithered out of a cut-out camouflaged by overgrown poke sallet.

Da'Ndre wasn't speeding, so he knew the cop wasn't pulling _him_ over. He figured the cop would rush past, on his way to chase some actual lawbreaker up ahead. So he just kept doodling along, still on cruise, still five under the limit.

_Lean on me,_ sang Bill Withers, _when you're not strong..._ Da'Ndre sang along, his voice becoming one with his dad's old mix tape. _And I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on..._

The cop stayed on Da'Ndre's ass for half a mile before rudely interjecting a series of chirps from his siren.

Da'Ndre examined the situation in the rear view. He felt a twinge of emotion. It was an unexpected upwelling from within, some emotion he couldn't quite place. Regret, maybe it was regret. Or some other emotion he couldn't figure out. Dread, maybe. Or grief. He turned the volume up louder, wiped a tear, and kept ignoring the cop.

For it won't be long, til I'm gonna need...

The siren went full bore like the cop was dead serious about pulling someone over.

...somebody to leeeeean on....

Da'Ndre wasn't like none of the other guys at Marblee's Amusements. Those other guys had bald heads and broken teeth. They rolled dice, talked trash, smoked cancer sticks. A few were white and a bunch of them didn't even speak English. They had dry legs and ashy elbows and rancid breath. They all wanted to operate the Tilt-a-Whirl because they thought they might get a chance to bang some of the jailbait that lined up to ride it. They were fools.

Da'Ndre, on the other hand, was well groomed and trendy. He had a genuine GED diploma and buckwheat dread spikes. He had a cubic zirconia stud pinned in his left earlobe because he didn't like conflict diamonds. His front left incisor was a fake tooth made of solid gold. All of his other teeth were perfectly straight, because he had had braces when he was a teenager. And since he had got the gold tooth, he had made it a policy to put a stop to every potential physical altercation — before it even had a chance to start — by throwing the first punch.

The cop jerked his steering wheel, swerved into the breakdown lane, and gunned his engine. He flew past the Galaxie in a hail of dust and gravel like he was Dale Earnhardt. Once he'd passed, the cop whipped his wheel back, swerved directly in front of Da'Ndre and stood on his brakes.

Da'Ndre saw the rear end of the cop's cruiser zooming in like it was a bad horror movie. He could swerve off the road, but when the guardrail failed, he'd surely end up dead and embarrassed at the bottom of an ugly looking culvert. He decided it was a better idea to ram right into the rear end of the cop car. So he lined it up to happen.

A split-second before the cars crashed, however, a gray jowled K-9 — an innocent old dog — raised her head into the beams of the old Galaxie's headlights and looked right into Da'Ndre's soul from the back seat of that cop car.

Da'Ndre didn't wanna hurt no dog, even if it was a cop dog. So he swerved away.

He was surprised when his hulking vehicle bounced off the galvanized rail like a ping-pong ball. This guardrail turned out to be stronger than the last one he'd taken out.

The car spun around and came to rest in a cloud of black rubber smoke, sideways across the breakdown lane. Its right front light was busted out. A geyser was blowing from under the hood. The left rear fender was jutting into the traffic lane.

There was nothing Da'Ndre could do. He just sat there while the old Galaxie's heartbeat struggled in its death throes. Its radiator wept. Its engine gasped. Bill Withers warbled like a bad 8-track.

Lean on me...

At that moment, Da'Ndre realized what the elusive emotion was that he had been feeling. It was _loss_. That's what it was. _Loss_. His chin trembled. _What the fuck is it that I have lost that's making me feel this way?_ he thought. _Don't everybody else in the world go through the exact same shit as I do?_

He looked into the evening sky. The stars twinkled. The moon smiled.

All Da'Ndre Goldstein wanted was his momma. Was that too much to ask of God, or fate, or destiny, or even the goddamn poe-leese?

He just wanted his momma. That's all he wanted.

The cop rolled out of his cruiser, juggled his pistol from its holster, and directed the blue steel barrel toward Da'Ndre's nose. The cop was about thirty-five, visibly shaking. He had a pronounced beer gut, a greasy black comb-over, and a wad of snuff puffing his lower lip out. He was a dangerous and frightened white man. "Put your hands where I can see em, boy!"

Da'Ndre realized his hands were clamped over a bleeding egg that was growing out of his forehead. Blood trickled down his nose. He let go of the egg and gripped the wheel at ten and two, so the cop could see his hands plain as day.

The cop reached behind himself and dragged his dog out of the car by a studded steel choke collar on an eight-foot chrome chain leash. The dog was an elderly mix of black lab and slobber, with a dime-size hole right through the middle of one ear. It gave her master a sidelong glance of guilty panic, then squatted.

"Git over here, Missy!" The cop shouted without looking back at the dog. He focused the barrel of his pistol and all his attention directly on Da'Ndre's face. "Put yer hands up, boy!"

"I think your dog's gotta take a shit, officer," Da'Ndre said.

"Boy you shut up," the cop said, dragging the arthritic dog by its choke collar. "Git over here, Missy!"

Missy prematurely pinched one off and obediently slunk over beside her master, obviously expecting to be slapped. When she got close enough, the cop kicked the dog's hind end and pointed to Da'Ndre's car. "Go sniff it." The poor dog hunkered down like an abused rescue.

"Hey, man, you shouldn't treat your dog like that," Da'Ndre said.

The cop, still pointing his pistol toward Da'Ndre's face, stepped close enough for Da'Ndre to read the name badge pinned on the breast of his starched gray uniform.

[ NIMROD ]

"What's in your trunk, boy?" the cop asked.

"This ain't my car, sir."

"Missy here got ya," Nimrod said, waving his pistol toward the dog, who was lying in the gravel, her head down, her eyes clinched tight against the shock waves of 18-wheelers passing at full speed. "How about you just tell me what you got and save us both a buncha trouble."

"That dog didn't say nothin. Look at her. She's lyin down, scared and shakin. You're abusin that poor animal."

Officer Nimrod filled Da'Ndre's window with his gut. He pushed the barrel of his pistol up to Da'Ndre's temple and shoved him backwards against the headrest. With his other hand, he reached through the window and groped for the car keys in the ignition. He extracted a solo key, not a key ring. "Where's the key to your trunk, boy? I'm gonna look inside it."

"I ain't got one."

"You a lyin sack of shit. Get out of the car real slow," Nimrod said, stepping back and gripping his pistol with both hands in a firing stance. "Keep your hands where I can see em, boy."

Da'Ndre kept both his hands visible to the cop as he reached out the window and popped the exterior door handle. He rode the door open, stumbling out of the car with his hands still on display through the Galaxie's window frame.

Nimrod stepped behind Da'Ndre, grabbed the collar of Da'Ndre's t-shirt, and twisted it tight around Da'Ndre's throat. He jerked Da'Ndre backwards and then threw him face down across the Galaxie's trunk lid. He ground a knee into Da'Ndre's assbone, skull-fucked him with the barrel of his pistol, and shoved the long arm of the law into Da'Ndre's front pocket. The cop played hacky sack with Da'Ndre's balls before extracting a little baggie of weed. He tossed the three buds of kush triumphantly on the hood and keyed his collar mic. "Ethel, we got a Quad-N. Repeat we got a Quad-N."

"Roger. Quad-N," said a drawling fuckwit of a woman through the radio.

"Quad-N?" Da'Ndre shouted onto the trunk lid. "I ain't done no Quad-N! What's a Quad-N?"

"Northbound. Ninety-Five. Narcotics."

"Hey! That's only three N's," Da'Ndre said. "What's the other N you're accusing me of?"

"I know your kind, boy," the officer said, humping Da'Ndre's haunches. The cop grabbed a hunk of mini-dreads and shoved Da'Ndre's face back down onto the car's multicolored paint job. "You ain't got nothin, boy, do ya?" the cop said. "You ain't got no kids, you ain't got no wife, you ain't got no family at all, do ya? Nobody gives a shit about you and you don't give a rat's ass about nobody else, ain't that right?"

Da'Ndre twisted around and saw the cop's "Officer of the Year" medallion glint in the headlights of a passing semi.

"I bet you ain't even got no momma and daddy that taught you how to behave like a civilized human being," the cop said.

And then Officer Purvis Quackenbush Nimrod III, Shannon County Police Department's Officer of the Year, made the tactical error of attempting to slap a handcuff on Da'Ndre Goldstein's brown left wrist.

CHAPTER TWO

### A FEW DAYS EARLIER

"Hello?"

Da'Ndre gulped. He could hear a hellish cacophony of angry noise coming from the other side of the line. "Yo Daddy, it's me. It's Da'Ndre."

"Well I'll be a mothafucka. Seventeen years of nothin, not even a goddamn post card, and now when I'm finally gettin out, you calling me up? What you want with me, boy?"

"I, uh, I just wanna know...do you know...I just wanna know...is Momma still alive?"

"How in the fuck should I know?" the old man said. "All I know is, she ain't never called or wrote, and nobody never told me shit about her one way or the other. Kinda like _you,_ boy. One minute ago, I didn't know whether _you_ was dead or alive."

"I, uh... Are you gonna go lookin for her when you get out? Cause I wanna go lookin for her."

"Well how about you get your sorry black ass up here on Monday at one minute after noon and pick me up," the old man said. "We'll talk about it over a tall can of ice-cold Colt 45."

"Well, I would, but I ain't got no car."

"You ain't got no car? How old are you, boy?"

"You know how old I am."

"Twenty-nine years old and ain't never even got hisself no goddamn car," the father said to his son from the confines of Aberdeen State Penitentiary. "I am so ashamed of you, boy."

"You in prison, Daddy," Da'Ndre said. "You ain't got no right to be ashamed of me or nobody."

"I can be ashamed of whoever I wanna be ashamed of, especially if it's _you._ " Andre Turnipseed said. He laid down a dramatic pause before dropping to _sotto voce,_ as if the prison wasn't recording his call to be transcribed for the court at their future discretion. "You remember where we wrecked?"

"I was twelve years old," Da'Ndre said. "My head went through the windshield and fucked me up. I can't remember a lot of shit."

"Well, it was down in Shannon County, Georgia, boy. That's where you and me said goodbye for the last time."

"What does that have to do with Momma?"

"There's a white chick down there, name of Sugarplum Dingledine. Write that down. She used to be married to the county sheriff. Long blonde hair, skinny as a toothpick, smokes like hell and chain chews Juicy Fruit. Got a retard for a kid. She's been sendin me letters. Sexy letters. I think she wants to fuck me."

"What you got me writin this bullshit down for?"

"Bitch runs a junkyard," the old man said. "Says she's been saving the old Galaxie for me all this time. Said I can come down and get it whenever I get out."

"Saving the Galaxie? That car was an old piece of shit seventeen years ago. That's one thing I _do_ remember."

"When you pick it up, don't open the trunk, aight?"

"I ain't going to no goddamn junkyard looking for a rusty old car because you wanna fuck some white ho."

"You hear me boy? I said: Don't. Open. The. Fucking. Trunk."

"You hear _me,_ old man? I said I ain't pickin up your goddamn old wrecked car."

"You wanna see your momma, you come and get me on Monday. And don't open—"

The line went dead.

Da'Ndre looked at his clamshell's screen. It was a burner, and it was out of minutes.

He threw it in the trash.

# # #

After Da'Ndre stuck out his thumb, he got within six miles of his destination in only three rides, but then walked the next four miles backwards with his thumb out. The last two miles he gave up hitching and trudged down a dusty gravel road until he finally stumbled through a welded steel gate that looked like the entrance to Auschwitz. He walked into the focal point of Sugarplum's Classic Automotive Parts, a subtle euphemism for what was actually a straight-up car dump.

Da'Ndre quickly spotted the old Galaxie under a rusty tin lean-to. Memories returned like magic. It was indeed an unforgettable car, a big American hawg with an easily recognizable paint job.

He walked over to it like a hypnotized child and ran his fingertips across the once-shiny passenger door handle. The chrome was pitted with age and felt rough to the touch. He circled the car. Thick sheets of multicolored lacquer were peeling off its body. A pox of rust had infected everything. The entire length of its driver's side was rippled from smacking into those two Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs. A taillight lens was busted. The tires were flat and dry rotted.

He peered through the driver's window, which had lost transparency due to a milky cataract. He admired the once bright, smooth leatherette upholstery, now faded with age. He saw the hand controls rigged to push the brake and gas pedals. And he saw Buzz Lightyear laying twisted, dead on the passenger floor, the little action figure's chest blackened with a crust of dried blood.

He opened the driver's door; the hinges complied with a rusty complaint. He laid down across the bench seat, reached over and tore his little friend off the floor. He knew the congealed blood that held Buzz to the carpet was his own childhood blood mixed with his own father's blood and his own mother's blood.

Da'Ndre reached up toward the busted windshield. The broken glass looked like a sheet of diamonds. He touched the interior of a concave orb that was molded into it. He knew the one on the far right was the outline of his mother's skull. Then he felt his father's on the left side, and finally, he felt his own, the little one in the middle with the curly black hair still stuck in the bloodstained cracks.

There were three bell-shaped protrusions, made by three human heads, in a sudden stop, seventeen years before.

# # #

Da'Ndre Turnipseed had been twelve years old back when weed was Mexican, gas was free and niggas was still strugglin. He remembered the coal black bunion of his dad's bare foot, chokeholding the Galaxie's pedal to the floor. The old man was overloading the rich running 302, making it gulp hi-test like he was flying it to the moon.

They bottle-rocketed past 60, 70, 80, Daddy barely holding the wound-up small block between the ditch and the double yellow, faster and faster, the three of them, father, mother and son, for some confusing reason pursued by several police cars, red lights flashing — they were red back then — as the speedometer's needle jiggled past the century, and the stupid tractor rolled out from the farmer's dirt driveway.

And then he was in a strange hospital bed, orphaned.

# # #

Da'Ndre dropped to a knee. He hunched down and let his eyes adjust to the dark ripples of the car's belly. Underneath, bushels of corn stalks, milkweeds and cattails were still jammed into the linkage and brake lines, like shards of bamboo shoved under fingernails.

In addition to the windshield and front bumper, Da'Ndre figured the old car needed a new battery, four new tires and some Quaker State. They probably had a used taillight laying around somewhere in the junkyard to replace the busted one. If the engine started, fine. If not, Da'Ndre knew he didn't have enough scratch to get this beast back on the road. He figured the only hope he had, was if this Sugarplum bitch — whoever she was — really wanted to fuck his daddy bad enough to help a nigga out.

Da'Ndre became aware of the floral scent of Juicy Fruit gum, commingled with the locker-room stench of sweaty rubber shoes. He caught sight of a pair of piggy pink feet shoved into avocado Crocs. His eyes followed the sight line up to a solar eclipse of a dominatrix standing over him. She was an antique amazon with straight gray witch's hair. Her sunburn was medium-rare. She was poured into XXL spanx knockoffs that were escaping the confines of her cherry hotpants. Her boobs were freeballing in a pink bandanna halter. "I thought you wasn't gettin out til Monday," the she-giant said.

Da'Ndre stood up. The woman was open-mouthedly chewing gum, spewing fructose fumes directly into his face. As she chewed, Da'Ndre caught a glimpse of her rows of molars: once-proud teeth that had surrendered to a lifelong love struggle with Mr Wrigley. "I'm lookin for a skinny blonde woman, name of Sugarplum Dingledine," Da'Ndre said. "She's a real sexy woman."

"Oh hells bells, I remember you now, you're that kid, the one right there." She pointed to the centermost orb punched into the Galaxie's windshield. "I thought you was your daddy, fell down in a bucket of Clorox or somethin."

A skinny retard suddenly jumped out from behind the woman. He pirouetted a complete circle like a clumsy ballerina, and then kicked the air, faking a kung fu move. "Huuuwwwaaa!" Then he flashed his balled fists, hunched over, holding his elbows tight to the sides of his pelvis. "You want me to fuck him up, momma?" He had straight hair from a center part down to his tramp stamp. It was hair just like his momma's, except it was an unremarkable shade of acorn brown.

"Shut up, Rupert," the woman said, and turned back toward Da'Ndre. "Don't mind him none. He's retarded."

Rupert the retard hopped around like he wanted Da'Ndre to pop him in the mouth, except just out of Da'Ndre's reach. He looked to be somewhere between seventeen and twenty-six. It was hard for Da'Ndre to tell with retards.

"I'll fuck him up if you want me to, momma!" the boy said, karate dancing just out of range. "Punk ass nigga!"

"I said shup boy!" and the momma backhanded her retard silly with a wallop to the chops that left the boy pink cheeked. He immediately stopped hopping. His fists froze in midair. His chin trembled.

Da'Ndre followed the woman and her idiot son into the dank shipping container that served as her junkyard office and nighttime residence. Pinched stalactites of masticated rubber clung to every surface, even the corrugated steel ceiling. The entire shithole smelled like cotton candy.

Sugarplum plopped herself behind a gray metal desk, where she lit up her last Camel. The retard slid along the wall until he was behind his momma. The woman punched buttons on her electromechanical adding machine. "Less see," she said, snatching the paper tape. "Seventeen years times three hundred and sixty-five equals six thousand two hundred and five, times one hundred and five dollars per day, that comes to six hundred and fifty one thousand five hundred and five United States dollars."

"I ain't got that much on me."

"I'll give you a twenty percent discount, so that's...well hell we'll make it an even five hundred thousand and Rupert here will have her ready to drive first thang in the mornin."

"My daddy said you and him was in love."

"Ha! That's a good one." The woman leaned over, pulled a dirty curtain to reveal a picture window overlooking the junkyard panorama. "You see them seventeen cars out there all lined up?"

Da'Ndre peered outside. Sure enough, there were sixteen other wrecks in a row alongside the hand-painted Galaxie.

"Every one of them seventeen cars is all owned by men that Police Chief Red Dingledine done set up and sent to prison," she said. "I was married to that asshole for twenty-three long years. We had what you call 'sex' once every decade, always in the dead of winter." She punched buttons on her adding machine, totaled it up, snatched the paper tape and held it two inches in front of her nose. "That's three times we had sex." She balled the paper up, shot a basket, missed, and didn't give a shit. "Two of them times it was by mutual consent. First time he got twin boys. Second time I got this piece of shit." She flipped her gray hair backwards to indicate she was talking about Rupert. "Third time I got Planned Parenthood and a Jew lawyer from Lanta." She lifted her belly with one hand and adjusted her spandex with the other.

"Most I can do for that car is twenty bucks," Da'Ndre said.

"He got custody of the goddamn twins, which is why them two is still locked away in the penitentiary to this very day. Meanwhile, I got Rupert here, and I ain't never got a lick of child support from that motherfucker. Not. One... Thin... FUCKING DIME!" She pounded the gray metal desk with the butt of her fist. "And I can't even take his sorry ass to court no more, neither, cause he's got all the judges in the tri-county wrapped up in a tight little bow." She dropped the curtain, flopped back in her desk chair. "Your daddy's a felon, son. He's a thief, a drug smuggler, a child abuser, might be a murderer for all I know," she said. "But Red Dingledine... Red Dingledine is one fucking _son of a bitch!_ " She drove her fist down on the desk with a force worthy of the Richter scale.

"I'm gone kick your ass, mister," the retard said, dancing behind his momma with his fists balled up again. "You just a chicken-ass nigga."

"Shut up, Rupert," Sugarplum said, and threatened her son with the back of her hand. When the boy stopped dancing, she directed her attention back to Da'Ndre. "Well I got me the scoop on Red Dingledine just when them Japanese VHS cameras first started showing up for sale down at Wal-Mart. And I got him recorded on videotape laying down in a bed with another man just like in the wicked parts of the Holy Bible. And I give that tape to my lawyer. So now, when Red Dingledine meets his maker, I get all his goddamn life insurance. I get his house and all his furnishings. I get all his money, his So'Security, his retirement. I get every fucking thing he owns. That's all been wrote down in black and white by lawyers, and I got all the papers stacked up in that safe right there." She waved a pudgy mitt toward an old claw-footed steel box, a gesture that made Rupert take a step backward in fear. "That's why I'm saving all them seventeen cars outside. Cause one of them men that Red Dingledine done up and sent to prison is gonna come along one day and help me get my reward. As it happens, your daddy is the first of that bunch to get out."

"Well, Miss Sugarplum, I don't know if we'll be able to smoke the police chief for ya," Da'Ndre said. "But it sure would be nice for me and my daddy to have a car."

"Oh, you got the car," she said. "You got the car out of the goodness of my heart." She threatened to backhand her son even though he wasn't doing anything. "You take that car and go meet your daddy when he gets outa prison. But you better heed my advice, son. You make sure you ain't within a thousand miles of his black ass when he comes back down here to get his revenge, cause the business he's got to tend to down here, you don't wanna get involved in."

# # #

Da'Ndre laid down on a makeshift bed rigged out of three bucket seats lined up in a row and duct taped together. He couldn't sleep because Rupert made so much noise working on the car right outside the door all night.

At 11:14 a.m. the next morning, Da'Ndre was awakened by sunlight leaking through the curtains. He staggered outside, finding Rupert still dicking around with a replacement windshield taken from a similar style of vehicle in the back lot. It appeared that the junkyard windshield didn't quite fit properly, despite the amount of physical persuasion Rupert was applying.

When the car was finally ready to roll, it had three new used tires and a new used battery. Rupert had legalized the broken taillight with an X made of red electrical tape. The engine was full of oil so black, when Rupert revved it, it was easy to see it dripping out of the tailpipe.

As long as the car could propel itself down the road, Da'Ndre figured he didn't mind the vertical crack in the glass directly in front of the steering wheel.

Sugarplum waddled up and handed Da'Ndre a single car key. "That's the only key I got," she said. "I ain't never had no key to the trunk."

Da'Ndre recalled his dad's warning, not to open the trunk. "I don't give a shit about no trunk key," he said. "I don't need to get in it."

"Aight then, suit yerself," the big woman said. "You go on up I-95 to the penitentiary and meet yer daddy when he gets out on Monday." She thwocked a loogie into the dust, watched it bounce, and then caught Da'Ndre's eye with an unexpected flash of feminine mystique. "Tell him I said howdy."

CHAPTER THREE

### TUESDAY AFTERNOON

Launjeray listened for an eternity to the metallic scratch of a key on the face of a deadbolt. It was either a kid or a drunk. Could be her little girl. Could be her man. "ZAT YOU, MUTHAFUCKA?"

Industrial springs creaked open and then slammed the steel door shut like an ice-cold bear trap. The cracked glass on Launjeray's rear projection flat screen TV chattered. An assortment of Afrocentric hair care products tinkled. A bong staggered. The entire apartment floor shook.

But there were no family photos rattling on the walls. There were no books falling off shelves. No fridge magnets losing their grip on elementary school artwork.

The only decor displayed in the entire apartment was a black star thumbtacked to the drywall on Launjeray's side of the bedroom. It was printed on a ragged circle of cheap gray newsprint that had been chewed out of a larger target by small caliber machine gun. The slamming door didn't bother it much. Maybe there was a puff of air that caused it to wave a little. But mostly, it just hung there, silent, insignificant, static, unnoticed and ignored by everyone except Launjeray.

"It's me, Momma!" T'Whirl peeked around the door into Launjeray's bedroom, grinning the incisor-lite salutation typical of six year olds.

"I thought you was T-Bone," Launjeray said, relieved that it was her daughter. "He's been gone so long, like he's on CPT."

The little brown second grader had seen her mother lying naked in bed countless times before, so today was no different. "I got in trouble today," she said.

"What for this time?"

"You know how you say there is no Santa Claus? That everything I get for Christmas you done bought with your own hard-earned money?"

"I told you not to tell no one that."

"Well they got mad at me and sent me to the office."

"Just for sayin there wasn't no Santa Claus?"

"No, ma'am," T'Whirl said, "for kicking Billy Perkins in the nuts."

Launjeray considered the information. "He hit you first?"

"He tried to."

"Why he try to?"

"For sayin there ain't no Santa Claus." T'Whirl wrangled a wrinkled envelope from her backpack. "Here. They sent you a letter."

"Set it down on the dresser, I'll read it later."

Launjeray watched her daughter put the letter on the dresser. The little girl's hair was braided tight to the scalp, capped off with an eight-pack of Family Dollar pink plastic bow clips. If one of her front teeth grew in made of gold, Launjeray thought, T'Whirl would look just like her daddy.

# # #

On the night of T'Whirl's conception, Launjeray had been hastily assigned the job of tailing a pasty-ass white trash bitch. It was a warm summer Saturday night, and for some reason, that honky tornado bait drove her sorry ass, in her sorry ass hand-control panel van, out to some sorry ass county fair, way out in the sorry ass country somewhere, and Launjeray had to follow the sorry ass bitch the entire sorry ass way.

The county fair was set up in a park beside the courthouse. The white trash bitch made a show of heaving her lard ass out of the cripple-equipped van's driver's seat and into a wheelchair. Then she lowered her chrome-and-blubber rig using the van's wheelchair elevator. It wasn't hard to keep the bitch in sight, what with the matching pair of rebel flag tattoos on both her arms like stripes on a soldier's uniform, the "Forget, Hell!" bumper sticker she had pasted across the ass end of her wheelchair, and the Stars-N-Bars tank top busting with her huge boobs. A civil war battle raged across her exposed belly. Her frizzy bleach-blonde mullet was so distinctive, it might as well have been a blue light flashing over Moon Pies in K-Mart.

If there was any possibility that the bitch would forget her fraud and stand up, or demonstrate any other normal physical capability below the waist, it would be at the fair, and Launjeray would get the video, and that would get her a $300 bonus from the detective agency. But the bitch just used her monster biceps to roll her big-ass chrome wheelchair through the entire fairground. She rolled across the lumpy park grass, from one carnival employee to the next. She yelled shit at them. In response, they gave her a shake of the head, or a shrug, or a scalp scratch. And then she moved on to the next ride, the next game, the next food stand, the next employee of some nomadic carnival company called Marblee Amusements.

It appeared to Launjeray that the rebel bitch wasn't at the fair for the rides or the games or the food or the fun of it. No, she was doing some sort of systematic interrogation.

As the fat white trailer trash twit rolled her wheelchair away from the ferris wheel, Launjeray flashed her badge at the machine's operator. He was a brown skinned septuagenarian who leaned on a six-foot control lever. She gave him just enough time to register sight of her badge, but not enough time to read the fine print. "What's that lady want?" Launjeray asked the old carnival worker, nodding toward the back of the rebel flag bitch, who was wheeling toward the next employee.

"You a cop?" the ferris wheel operator asked. He casually abandoned his control lever and stepped toward her as the huge ride revolved over their heads.

"Yeah," Launjeray said.

The ferris wheel operator liberally examined Launjeray as if he had x-ray vision. "You ain't no cop," he said, soaking up the glory of the young brown woman standing before him. She was dressed in electric orange shorts, with a fashionably ripped tee and baby blue toenails displayed in citrus colored rubber thong sandals. "You too dishy to be a cop."

"Undercover," she said, "so what did that redneck woman in the wheelchair want?"

"Wanted to know if I heard of a man."

"Who ain't heard of a man?" she said. "What name was she lookin for?"

"Some man name of Dondray Turnipseed or somethin."

"Dondray Turnipseed? Who's he?"

"She says he's her long-lost son." The old ferris wheel operator stepped back to his control levers and leaned on one. "She says he's supposed to be workin here."

"You know him?"

"We got a Dondray but he's black and he's a Jew or somethin," the ferris wheel operator said. "We ain't never heard of no Turnipseed nobody round here." He hocked a loogie but didn't spit it. "People come around here wantin all sorts of shit." Then he pulled on the long steel arm to stop the wheel. Two kids jumped off. "Get on, I'll give you a free ride," he said.

"No thanks, I got work to do."

"I ain't talkin bout ridin no ferris wheel, babydoll," the old black dude said, humping his control lever in an inappropriate manner for a man his age.

By 10 p.m., the fat white supremacist fake cripple bitch had queried every single one of the ride operators, game hawkers, ticket booth attendants, food vendors and port-a-john cleaners at the fair, and appeared to have reluctantly surrendered to a humiliating defeat. She fought her wheelchair back to her handicap van like Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was retreating heavy artillery by mule. Then she screwed herself up the van's cranky elevator, and made a phenomenal show of hoisting herself out of her wheelchair and into the van's driver's seat.

Throughout the excruciating process, Launjeray kept her video camera rolling. She was hoping to catch a slip-up, some flicker of false injury, some physical capability or evidence of fraudulent intention. But the redneck bitch managed to fake it the entire time. She even used her hand controls to drive away.

Maybe her back really was fucked up, Launjeray thought, shutting off her video. Maybe she really _did_ deserve a payout. Who knows? Not everybody is a crook or a criminal. Sometimes the insurance companies gotta settle up with people like they're supposed to.

Launjeray made a mental note to request a different assignment. This one was going nowhere and she needed a whole string of bonuses to cover the bad check she wrote for last month's rent, plus the two late fees, penalties and interest.

She was burnt out on tailing the bitch for the day, but no way in hell was she going back home to T-Bone. Yesterday the moon was full, and as usual she experienced the tell-tale pinch of her left ovary as it laid yet another egg like a goddamn Tyson chicken, right on time as usual. Twenty-three years old, with a teeny belt of extraneous belly fat, she was at the peak of feminine fertility. In fact, probably wasn't a woman walking the earth more fertile than Launjeray was on that night.

And she knew T-Bone would be waiting.

And she knew T-Bone would demand his poontang bareback.

Launjeray found herself idly observing a pudgy adolescent boy who was machine-gunning a paper target with a BB gun. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt underneath overalls that he'd turned into cut-off shorts. His arms and legs were white as fresh cream. His face was pink, as dimply as fresh-plucked poultry. His countenance was pocked with explosive, hand-molested acne.

The boy's adoring future bride brushed a bra full of wadded toilet paper against his bicep, but the boy's BBs were disinterested, and the young chicken-skinned soldier quickly descended into military failure. It was a sad sight. He was having less success eradicating the black star taunting him from the target than he apparently had talent for swallowing foot-longs. The boy's air gun petered out like a disappointing money shot as the bell rang, and the disgraced loser of a lad shuffled his girl toward the solace of rodent-infested carnival cuisine.

Launjeray watched the defeated pair wander away, wishing she had a relationship like that, instead of goddamn T-Bone. She asked herself every day, how in the fuck had she ended up stuck with that bastard?

When he first moved in with her, he was a walking vaginal orgasm. She first saw him dancing in corduroy, a hundred percent Marlboro from his ten gallon to the silver tips of his roach-killers. He had a job, a decent middle management job down at the supermarket, making good money. And he had opportunity for advancement.

He didn't punch her til a couple months after he'd moved into her place, when he was pissed off after being fired. And by then he was already claiming her paycheck every payday and snorting all the profits from his white powder sideline straight up his bony schnoz.

Since that time, he hadn't done shit but drink, sell dope, pay zero rent and play the pathetic martyr. He was so stupid, he couldn't figure out how a paper clip worked. He farted up half the breathable air in the apartment and choked up the other half with his nasty liquor breath.

The only affection Launjeray got from T-Bone was the moderately accurate flight of his balled fist, the rotten stench of his perpetually unbrushed teeth, and the abnormal angle of his erect penis, all at his convenience.

Ordinarily she wouldn't have bothered, but this particular evening, she was frustrated enough to slap two bucks on the counter and pick up chicken-skin's rifle, still ripe with the pheromones of his adolescent sweat. Maybe she was a better shot.

The passing crowd ejected an anonymous, sinewy brown man. He had lean legs under white dress pants. His masculine sternum peeked between loose buttons on his lively silk tropical shirt. His ass was to die for. He was a handsome brotha with a headful of baby dreads. He had a perfectly straight, white grille, except for a solitary tooth adorned with 24k.

Launjeray studied this man. The only flaw she saw was the diamond on a gold stud stuck through his left ear. She didn't like no child-mined rocks.

The man slapped his two bucks down and picked up the rifle directly to Launjeray's right. He sat down beside her, even though there were a dozen vacant spots he could have chosen instead. He bumped his naked left elbow into her right. It was well manicured and lotioned, not all ashy like T-Bone's. The man smelled like cocoa butter.

That diamond in his ear wasn't so bad, either, Launjeray thought. Nobody's perfect. By now, those kids in the diamond mine were probably dead from some tragic underground collapse, or in UN custody as refugees, better off than she was. But even if those children were still deep in the diamond mines, Launjeray knew she couldn't expect every smokin hot black man she ran into to have as sensitive a social conscience as she did.

The bell rang and they began firing.

Launjeray took out her frustration on the black star, but quickly realized she had no chance of eradicating it as the rules required. Lucky for her, though, the handsome young brown man sitting beside her turned his own rifle toward her target, and he was a fine shot. He abandoned his own target for hers. He helped her along, and poked a string of holes around Launjeray's black star like arrows shot straight from Cupid's quiver.

Together, the two made short work of the mission. They blasted a ragged, victorious wound in Launjeray's target, until her black star hung by a tatter, and then fluttered to the floor, dead, just as the bell ended the round.

"Excellent shootin, ma'am." The strange young man winked at Launjeray and smiled a gorgeous golden heart-melt, illuminated by the animated lights of the merry-go-round.

The hawker inspected Launjeray's target and fired her a suspicious glance. "Awright," he said with a resigned growl, "take yer pick lady." He motioned to all the stuffed animals surrounding the machine-gun nest.

Launjeray gazed around at the fuzzy rainbow of furry prizes. She entered the dreamy realm of teen years she never had, but had always wanted. Her imagination conjured the feminine bedroom of the blonde Disney princess, a girl without a care in the world, except which handsome prince she would choose to marry. In this royal fantasy world, there was no argument, no pain, no violence, no fucking T-Bone. The harem of fluffy stuffed animals beckoned her with ersatz love and adoration, and then she noticed her glorious knight in shining armor had disappeared.

Launjeray zigged and zagged through the crowd, her elbow choking the giant lime teddy bear. The black star souvenir was clenched between her fingers. She searched for the stranger, the mysterious and handsome young brown man who had sacrificed his own score for hers.

And then, like magic, she was lying on her back in the matted, unmown, thick bladed county courthouse grass behind the Tilt-A-Whirl. She snaked out of her shorts and panties, and spread her naked thighs wide to allow the young, sinewy stranger with the gleaming enamel and golden dental repair to indulge himself in her beauty, her moistness, her fertility.

The dew was heavy on the prickly sharp blades. Black electrical wires, each as thick as a man's emboldened member, lay around and underneath her body, randomly crisscrossing, hither and yon from the power poles and generators to the millions of blinking lights on dozens of spinning machines that were hurling hundreds of humans into delightful nausea. She felt the sixty-hertz vibration of alternating current escaping from a nearby nick in insulation. The electric buzz flowed from a crack in rubber, through the dewy grass, and into the marrow of her spine. The sensation radiated to every pore of her body, a stimulation that she had never felt before, nor since.

She returned the stranger's kisses. She gave her privates to his fingers. She was surprised to find that his penis was circumcised. It was the first time she'd ever touched a brotha without a turtleneck. She found it so sexy, she couldn't keep her mouth off it.

He laid her back, stuffing her giant green bear underneath her hips. The grinning toy's googly eyes peered out from the crack of her crotch as if panicked by the sight of incoming. Launjeray's short-cropped neo-afro nestled between the bear's androgynous legs as the nameless man smooched his way to heaven.

A flip to the left, a flop to the right, and her bare soles worshiped the gods of the erotic starry sky. She was in ecstasy. She didn't care if she got electrocuted, or worse. She could only get knocked up once, and if this dude shot up the club, then that son-of-a-bitch T-Bone couldn't, and the world didn't need another goddamn T-Bone, not even another half of a T-Bone.

The Tilt-A-Whirl spun overhead, directly above them as they made love. She didn't care that the kids on the ride were staring right out the sides of their pods and pointing excitedly at their naked bodies screwing in the grass on top of a green bear.

The handsome young man's thrusts mimicked the mechanical arms of the steel beast, lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping, as the lights from a distant spinning disco ball illuminated him, streak by streak, raking across his glistening chest, his sweat-dripping nose, and his wild, bloodshot eyeballs.

She didn't care about her clitoris. She reached up from underneath, grabbed his hips, and rocked him hard. She knew where her cervix was. She made it kiss his frenulum, back and forth in perfect time to the beat of the woofers until all the stars in the entire universe aligned.

And then he lay on top of her, catching his breath, slippery from the commingled, salty sweat of both of them, as the Tilt-A-Whirl pods full of the screaming teenagers rose and fell above.

She studied the handsome young man's features, memorized his face.

That diamond in his ear, she realized, was way too big to be anything but costume jewelry.

# # #

"Are you mad at me, Momma?" T'Whirl asked, jarring her mother back to the present.

Launjeray found herself staring at the black star thumbtacked to the wall. "No, T'Whirl," Launjeray said, "Actually, I'm proud of you." She saw the image of that handsome stranger captured in her daughter's face. "Will you please do me a favor, sweetie?"

"What, Momma?"

"Would you please untie me from the bedposts?"

"Sure." T'Whirl took a step toward her mother's bed and then froze.

Both of them heard the sharp tip of a second key, an alarming key, spastically stabbing at the front door's deadbolt like the snap of an alligator's jaw.

CHAPTER FOUR

### SUNDAY NIGHT

The Reverend JC Pagans drove the rickety short bus north on 95, occasionally awakening to a Franciscan chant of rumble strips engraved along the pavement's edge by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

"Keep it on the goddamn road, dipshit." Gaia's disembodied, nicotine-infused rasp fog-horned from her private feminine sanctuary in the back of the bus.

JC flipped his long brunette curls off his right eye, but his bangs returned to block his vision. He took a fist off the wheel to more effectively backhand his glorious locks completely over his shoulder. This time they landed on his back as he intended, out of his way, so he could catch a view in the interior mirror. He stared into its reflection, focusing on Gaia's mysterious rear-seat boudoir.

He saw her silhouette, translucently suggestive behind a curtain of colorful hippie beads. She was wearing her florentine socialist nightgown: her anti-Victoria's Secret sleepwear that JC found sexy in an intellectual way.

And then, just like that, she had her hundred-decibel shout hole beside his sensitive, pitch-perfect ear. "WAKE UP, DOUCHEBAG!" It was as if she had flown to the front of the bus in zero time by witchcraft.

JC swerved the bus in response. The top-heavy rig rocked back and forth, briefly going up on two wheels. "I'm awake, Gaia!"

"You're weaving all over the fucking road!"

"I'm clipping the curves to save gas," he said. "We're down to an eighth of a tank and we've got three more hours to go."

Gaia heaved a melodramatic sigh and applied a butane flame to the tip of a Virginia Slim.

JC told himself it was just a lover's spat. The stress of the tour, financial issues, premenstrual syndrome. He whispered a little prayer to his personal Jesus, the one who stared back at him from the dashboard.

Gaia gazed at the dark deciduous silhouettes lining the interstate like hungry ghouls. "Look at this, we're out in the middle of fuckville nowhere goddamn Georgia hillbillyland," she said, "In the middle of the goddamn night when any sane person is home asleep in bed."

"Well what do you wanna do, Gaia?" he asked. "What's the alternative? We've got a tour, baby. The show must go on."

Gaia's celestial blonde braids — a halo draped round the fair symmetry of her obstinance — reminded JC of the innocent, faithful, angelic girl he had married. She was Eve to his Adam, his obedient God-sent companion. He had never mourned his rib one single bit.

"I wish I had a fucking skill, any fucking skill other than beating a goddamn electronic drum kit to tweens at some goddamn evangelical house of superstition while you drop to your knees on their plywood stage and air fuck them like a pervert."

"Look," JC said, turning toward her with an angry stare that inappropriately landed on the outline of one of her persistently erect nipples. "This next gig is a big one for us, alright? If we can get there, we'll sell twenty or twenty-five CDs. Maybe more."

"And if we run out of gas?" One of her hands was white-knuckled around the old bus's vertical chrome safety rail. Her other hand's index finger pointed to the sad-looking fuel gauge.

"We'll stop in a town somewhere and play a little gig on the street like we used to, til we raise enough money to get going again."

"Jesus F. Christ, this lifestyle is bullshit," she exhaled.

"Jesus Wants Me To Love You..." JC romantically crooned the opening lyrics to their signature song. "Jesus wants you to love me, too," he sang to her with one hand on the wheel and the other performing the song's hand motions. "That song is going to get us over the top, baby. Have faith."

"You look like a goddamn pedophile when you sing that," she said. "If I see your hips suggesting you're fucking that jailbait one more time when we're on stage, I'm gonna shitcan your goddamn autotune right in the middle of it."

"But honey, it's just an act," he said. "The kids love it. Everybody's doing it now."

"From now on, everybody except _us_. You're too old for that shit, Jonnie."

The interior of the old school bus exploded with disorienting bright blue strobes.

"Doggone it," JC said. He looked in the side rear-view and saw a cop car behind them. He laid his hand on dashboard Jesus. "Dear Lord, please help us get through this earthly test—"

"Oh, shut the fuck up! Quit yakking at your plastic idol," Gaia said. "Have some goddamn self-respect for once."

As JC negotiated the shoulder in unquestionable submission to the police, the old bus's brake linings grated metal-on-metal, crying for mercy like they were being crucified. When the bus finally screeched to a full stop, JC recalled a mental image of the front tires. Their tread was threadbare; pockmarked with a random array of beige fabric ovals peeking from underneath slick black rubber. JC suspected that a cracked exhaust manifold was to blame for his drowsiness, nausea, and pounding skull. With all their neglected equipment, plus his shitty driving, JC figured he could get more punishment from the State of Georgia than Jesus ever got from Pilate.

The cop pulled in behind them and slowed to a stop. The police car's disco lights were blinding. Its high beams winked back and forth, glaring through the interstate's airborne dust and their own filthy bus windows.

A thin, authoritative silhouette emerged from the cop car, followed by the outline of a wobbly legged dog. As the cop approached, JC's Warriors watched his features materialize from the darkness. He was a handsome young African-American man under a regulation broad brim. His dog, however, looked like it should be on Medicare.

"Game faces, Gaia," JC said. "We gotta get out of this ticket or we're doomed." He demonstrated the expression he wanted her to adopt. He faced her, contorting his lips into an exaggerated friendly grin — the grin which displayed his two unusually underdeveloped upper incisors. His bunny teeth were tiny and pathetic, off-color and brittle. The enamel at their tips were ragged as a bucktooth saw.

"Don't you ever give me that shit-eating grin again," Gaia hissed.

JC pursed his lips. His embarrassing physical flaw was an unfortunate remnant of his teen years, collateral damage from the battlefield of his parents' wickedly expensive divorce. Mr and Mrs Pagans' marriage had unexpectedly dissolved like rock salt around the lip of a margarita. As a result, the money that had been carefully saved for the lad's braces was instead blown on courtroom death matches between the couple's greedy lawyers. In the end, young Jonnie was shuffled off to the care of his grandma, and his defective front teeth were neglected. Despite promises from both of his parents, procrastination dictated that they were never destined to be cosmetically corrected.

By the time he had graduated from high school, JC had become an expert in hiding his prominent physical flaw behind toothless, lip-locked smiles, sullen silence and strict abstinence from humor. That is what led him to the Lord.

Needless to say, young Jonnie was an outcast as a teen. He never played sports. Instead, he locked himself in his bedroom, put on headphones so he wouldn't disturb anyone, and plinked all eight instruments that were programmed into the chip of his Play-N-Learn synth. All by himself, he improvised on that keyboard for hours, days, weeks, months, and years. When he was finally finished learning, a miracle occurred, giving him a sign. His drunken father, who had never given JC any gift worth a shit, showed up a week after JC's seventeenth birthday with a Radio Shack microphone that sported a huge black foam ball on the end. JC immediately knew it was perfect to hide his pair of secrets behind.

In his last year of high school, when JC emerged from his chrysalis to let his freak flag fly, he took to the stage in his senior talent show. Even though everyone in the audience knew he had horrid corn choppers, his teeth-hiding technique melded perfectly into the beatified persona he adopted. As long as his teeth were hidden, he was the spitting image of da Vinci's uncle, the dude in the focal point of _The Last Supper._ The dude that everybody said was Jesus.

"He's not gonna give us a ticket, we're JC's Warriors, right Gaia?" JC spoke to her from behind his hand.

"Get those goddamn teeth fixed, for fuck's sake."

The cop rapped on the driver's window with his big black flashlight.

JC forced the bus's recalcitrant window open. He offered his grin-like leer while squinting at the officer's name badge. "Hello, officer...[ NIMROD ]! How are you this evening?" He could see the cop's uniform was dirty and wrinkled. It was an ill-fitting uniform, too fat around the belly for the cop's frame. The breast pocket was ripped. There was a red stain on the collar, like blood. The cop's pants were cinched tight with a belt a good foot longer than the cop's circumference. It hung down in front of his barn door like a lopsided donkey dick. The cop's brown forehead had an angry pink knot right in the center.

Officer Nimrod blasted his bright flashlight into JC's eyes. It raked a high contrast angle across his face, blinding him. "What the hell are you?" the cop's disembodied voice asked as his beam probed the interior of the bus. "You some sort of circus act?"

"No sir," JC said, brushing his brunette waves back over his shoulders, "We're JC's Warriors, and-"

"Shuuuuuuuuut uuuuuup," the cop interrupted.

"Yessir," JC said.

Gaia leaned over and stuck her blonde head out through the bus window. "Officer, were we doing something wrong?"

"What did I just say?" The cop asked, shining his light directly into Gaia's eyes.

"I don't know, what _did_ you just say, officer?" Gaia pointed her cell phone camera lens at the cop. "Please repeat it for the video."

"Gaia," JC said helpfully, "the officer said, ' _shuuuuuuut uuuuuup._ '"

"Open the door, I'm searching the bus."

"No you are not!" Gaia screamed.

"Don't you want to see my driver's license and registration first?" JC asked politely, offering his documents like he was folding a pair of deuces.

Officer Nimrod trotted his dog around the front of the bus, through its headlights, and circled toward the entrance door.

Gaia rushed toward her private place in the rear of the bus.

"Gaia!" JC said. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Don't let him on the bus!" Gaia said.

"I have to, he's a police officer!"

Rap rap rap. "Open the door," Nimrod said. "Open the door now!"

"I said don't let him on the bus!"

JC stared at Gaia. His eyes narrowed. "Are you hiding something back there, Gaia?"

"I said open the door!"

JC threw the door open and greeted the boarding police officer with a jolly display of his infantile incisors. "Come on in, officer! We've got nothing to hide!"

"Sniff it," Nimrod commanded the dog, pointing into the bus. The dog idly snuffled at the first step, but must have misunderstood the command. She circled around a point on the wide step with the apparent intention of curling up for a nap. "Get up, Missy! Get on the bus!"

"We're JC's Warriors, officer! We're on our tour! You won't find anything on this bus, officer, except Christ Jesus! Come on, Gaia, sing with me!" JC raised his skinny, sun-starved arms to conduct an imaginary chorale. "Jeeeesus is the one and onlyyyyy, help us fiiiind Your waaayyy!"

"Shuuuuut uuuuup!" The cop placed his right hand on his pistol grip and stared JC down. "Did you hear me? I said, 'Shut. The. Fuck. Up.'"

"Yessir," JC said, exhibiting an onset of acute phobic neuroses. "Shut the fuck up, Gaia."

"You're the only one running your Jesus hole," Gaia said from behind her beaded curtains.

Nimrod lifted his lab's front legs and coached the old K-9 down the aisle of the bus.

The dog reluctantly got up off the step, dripped slobber past JC, and rambled toward the rear, until it nuzzled through the hippie beads and entered Gaia's private back-seat residence. Suddenly the police dog lunged with a maternal cry, jerking its leash like a swordfish hooked on light tackle.

"Missy! Stop!" Officer Nimrod's shoulder cracked like a giant knuckle.

Gaia screeched, hugging a towel-wrapped bundle between her breasts like a mother protecting her baby. The police lab stood on its hind legs, pulling at the leash, its front paws clawing the air.

JC rocketed out of the driver's seat. "What's going on? Gaia! Did you bring marijuana on this bus again?"

"I got her from a fan back in Alabama." Gaia wailed.

JC and Officer Nimrod locked eyes with a swarthy, bug-eyed creature swaddled in the cleavage between Gaia's tits.

"You can't have no dogs on a tour bus!" JC shouted, releasing his hometown grammar while extending his slender forefinger in his most professional Puritan accusation pose, as if he were a statue to honor witch burners.

"He don't bark!" Gaia dropped the pooch's blanket and proudly displayed the scrawny chihuahua in her outstretched fist. She held it by the nape of its neck, and waved it in front of the men's faces as if it were a cross and they were vampires. "His vocal cords have been fixed so he's quiet!"

Sure enough, when the mutt attempted to yap, it was like watching a silent movie. Both the cop and JC appeared to be disgusted, but the black-and-gray police lab was utterly intoxicated by the silent hyena's infinite beauty and invigorating aroma. The little dog's ribcage was skeletal. Its coat was splotched with mange. Its hot pink penis was erect, glossy, and oddly oversized, like a Cover Girl lipstick fully twisted out of its sheath.

It was the ugliest, nastiest excuse for a dog that JC had ever seen. "Oh that is one disgusting animal, Gaia."

"Aha! What is this?" Nimrod held up a little baggie of weed.

Suddenly they were silent, except for Gaia's hair-free friend, whose frenetic, wheezy, jaw-snapping convulsions morphed into a case of imminent regurgitation. The little bastard's head oscillated with punctuating belches. Its seizure slowed to an orgasmic climax. Finally, it spewed masticated ejaculate onto a bus seat: brown Purina blended with foul, pungent, Gorilla Glue bile.

JC looked green and queasy.

The cop ignored the sick dog, sternly displaying the baggie of weed to JC and Gaia in turn, using his flashlight for dramatic effect.

"Jesus, is this yours?"

JC peered at the cop with the humility of a Biblical martyr. "No, sir, it does not belong to me."

"Mary!" Nimrod spotlighted Gaia.

"I wish it was mine," Gaia said. "I'll take it if you're giving it away."

"It's nobody's on this bus, officer," said JC. "We're JC's Warriors!"

"You accusing me of somethin?" the cop asked. "You accusing me of plantin evidence?"

"No of course not, officer!" came the bunny-toothed response. "Not at all!"

The chihuahua silent-barked a jealous warning at the police dog, who was surreptitiously cleaning up the little mutt's puke.

"If neither of you confess," the cop said, "then I'll have to charge both of you with possession."

JC's face drained. "Officer, we've got a show in a few hours!"

"I confess!" Gaia's calm demeanor seemed to startle Officer Nimrod. "It's mine, officer. Take me in." She tossed her puking egghead onto the back seat and extended her feminine forearms toward the officer. It was a sensuous invitation, oily and fragrant with potions acquired from myriad wiccans, hellbound Unitarians, and CVS.

"I'm going to have to radio this in," Officer Nimrod stuttered, as if he was making shit up. "I'm leaving my police dog here so don't try nothin." He tied his K-9 to the seat where it was still busy licking up the chihuahua's puke. Then he scurried off the bus and trotted back toward his cop car.

Once the cop was off the bus, JC proudly displayed his healthy carotids, leveling Jehovah's wrath at Gaia. "I cannot believe you violated our trust by bringing marijuana onto our tour bus!" he preached. "I can see the headlines now! _'Christian Rock Band Arrested for Marijuana'._ " He pantomimed a Times Square marquee in the air with his hands.

"Oh yeah, like JC's Warriors is gonna make the news," Gaia replied. "Why don't you do like Officer Nimrod says, JC, and shut the fuck up."

"That mutt of yours is off this bus first thing tomorrow or I'm having it sent to purgatory by the closest veterinarian."

Gaia glared at the failed artist she had married. "You would never do such a thing," she said, "because you are a total pussy." She picked up her interspecies alien life form and smothered the infantile creature between her D and DD.

They saw Nimrod eclipse the cop car's headlights and manually hoist his oversize pants back up onto his waist before sliding into the police cruiser's driver's seat.

"How long have you had that dog hidden on the bus?"

"Since Mobile, I told you," Gaia said, wiping a phony tear. "Remember...? Our Lady of Great Graciousness and Guilt."

"I thought I smelled something."

JC pushed through Gaia's bead curtains so he could peer out the back window at the cop car behind them. Gaia joined him. The two musicians saw a flicker of orange light inside the cop car, like the flame of a candle.

"I wonder what he's doing," she said.

"I don't know..." JC said. "But here he comes!"

They watched as Officer Nimrod jumped from the cop car, sprinted along the side of the bus, and raced up the boarding steps, arriving out of breath. "We just got a report of an imminent terrorist attack on Christian Rock bands!" he exclaimed to the duo. "We've gotta get out of here! Now! Start the bus!" Then he ran to the back window and peered outside.

JC's Warriors exchanged confused glances.

" _All_ Christian Rock bands?" Gaia asked.

"Even _us?_ " JC appeared bewildered.

"We don't even have a _hit,_ " Gaia said. "Nothing at all on the radio. We can barely sell our CDs. Why would terrorists want to bother _us?_ "

"I've been ordered to ride with you for protection," the cop said. "You!" He shouted, pointing to JC, "Get this bus moving! Both of you gimme your cell phones, now!"

JC's Warriors were frozen in place. This did not seem right.

"Cell phones! Now! Move it, Jesus and Mary! Let's go!"

"What about the marijuana?" JC looked genuinely concerned for the fate of American justice.

"Fuck the weed." The cop was serious. "This is terrorism. This is an NSA alert. Terrorists are targeting Christian Rock bands and they've hacked into your cell phones. They're tracking you! Let's go! Move it!"

Gaia and JC exchanged a confused, suspicious glance. But then JC spied something out the back window. Blood drained from his face. He turned as white as an American Standard urinal. He extended his index finger toward the rear window as if he had spotted the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Gaia had seen some shit but she had never seen her husband so phenomenally terrified.

"Look!" JC screamed two full octaves higher than a grade-school tattletale. "Here comes one now!"

Gaia's eyes followed the sight line of JC's trembling forefinger out the back window, where she saw — alternately illuminated by the intermittent blue strobes of Officer Nimrod's cruiser and the creamy glow of the earth's astral companion — a naked, bleeding zombie, loping toward the bus, its arms waving, its head bald, a shock of its jet-black hair coated with blood, congealed diagonally across its face.

"I told you! There's a dozen of em out there just like that one!" Nimrod said. "It's a sleeper cell! Let's go!"

The police officer's command energized JC into full flight mode. He hopped into the driver's seat like a fighter pilot. He twisted the starter key hard, and popped his palm on the emergency brake release button like a Jeopardy contestant. The old school bus cut a huge greasy fart, expelled its nasty gas from the bowels of its brake system, and then rolled backward until it crumpled the hood of the cop car behind them.

"Go! Go!" the cop shouted.

The elderly lab jumped up onto the back seat, and stood on her hind legs, putting her front paws on the rear window. She growled at the sight of the approaching monster.

JC pumped the clutch, but the gears only clawed at each other inside the transmission without catching. The engine was racing but the bus was dead. "I can't get it in gear!"

" _You_ drive!" Officer Nimrod shouted, pointing at Gaia.

"Move goddammit!" Gaia shouted. She grabbed JC's preacher's shirt and dragged him out of the driver's seat, popping the buttons off it from crotch to collar. He fell into the aisle floor, threw a panicked look over his shoulder, and squealed. "He's almost here!"

Gaia jumped into the driver's seat, coaxed the clutch to disengage and managed to slip the tranny into gear just as the naked, bleeding wraith clambered over top of the police cruiser, leaped onto the bus's rear bumper, and got a solid grip on the emergency escape hatch handle on the back of the bus.

"Drive!" Officer Nimrod shouted, preparing himself for a fight.

"Go Go Go!" JC screamed.

The chihuahua chased its tail, silently barking.

The zombie clawed at the emergency door latch.

Gaia revved the engine to maximum RPMs and popped the clutch. The bus's nose reared up like a stallion. The ass end of the bus scraped across the cruiser's hood with an agonizing metallic screech.

The police K-9 took a stand in the aisle alongside Officer Nimrod, growling.

The living dead attacker jimmied the hatch handle and flung the emergency escape door open.

The brown cop steeled himself, fondling the grip of his pistol like he was making a decision. Then he threw his pistol into the nether regions of the bus's guts, way back underneath the homemade plywood bunks, and crouched in preparation for hand-to-hand combat.

"He's getting in!" JC screamed like a girl. "Why did you throw your gun away, Officer Nimrod?"

The old black lab went nuts. Her teeth were bared, threatening the intruder, spewing foam.

Gaia pumped the gas and bunny hopped the old bus, trying to shake the wraith off.

The naked attacker screeched and wept incoherently as he held tight to the door handle, flung back and forth on the swinging hinges.

Officer Nimrod kicked the wraith in the gut with each flop of the door, but the naked zombie managed to wrap its fingers and toes around the door frame and strike back at the cop with his bloody hands and feet, fighting his way in.

The old lab was going nuts. The chihuahua was insane with silent barking.

Gaia floored it, accelerating in an attempt to help Officer Nimrod push the wraith out the back door.

JC dropped to the floor, scrambled underneath a bunk, and curled into a fetal position. "Save us, Officer Nimrod! Save us!"

The mute chihuahua heroically jumped across the expanse of the back seat and latched onto the terrorist's pinky, but the attacker managed to throw the little dog off, grab hold of solid metal, and launch himself forward into Officer Nimrod. "You fucking nnniiiiiiggggggerrrr!" the wraith exclaimed as he knocked the brown cop backwards onto his ass. The wraith straddled Officer Nimrod on the aisle floor and struggled to choke him.

Both dogs tore at the naked attacker's bare ass with their nasty fangs.

Gaia could see the fight in the interior mirror. She slammed the brakes to disrupt the struggle.

The wraith was launched forward by kinetic energy. He somersaulted into the front firewall with the chihuahua still clamped to his ass.

The bus came to a complete stop.

The wraith jumped back onto his feet, tore the snapping chihuahua off his ass, and threw the silent mutt into the bus's stairwell. The attacker was hunched over, a pot-bellied Neanderthal. He flipped his bloody comb-over onto his bald pate. Crimson oozed from his nose, dribbled down his torso, dripped off the tip of his penis. He stared hatred at the brown police officer, who was crouched in the center of the aisle, poised and ready for the battle to resume. Then he glanced back and forth at Gaia and JC. " _I_ am the police!" he said to them. "I am Officer Purvis Q Nimrod!" He leveled a forefinger at the brown skinned cop. " _He_ is a fake!"

"You are Satan!" JC shouted, higher than Gaia's highest background vocals. He produced a golden plastic stage prop cross and flashed it at the naked demon from his hiding place under the seat. "Go back to Hell where you came from, Lucifer!"

Gaia revved the engine and popped the clutch, lurching the bus forward. The wraith stumbled, but then used the momentum to charge Officer Nimrod.

The brown police officer grabbed the wraith's arms, planted his feet in the wraith's gut, rolled onto his back, and launched the terrorist out the back door of the bus, upside-down.

But the zombie's arms flew wide. Still upside-down, he scraped at the doorway with his fingertips, stalling the officer's attempt to force him out.

As Gaia power shifted into second, Officer Nimrod jumped up and kicked his boot into the bloody attacker's crotch, over and over again.

The terrorist lost his grip and slipped, screeching at the top of his lungs, but he managed to swing around enough to snatch the bus's jutting bumper with his naked toes, while clawing a taillight with his fingernails. He momentarily hung there until Gaia crammed the bus into third. Then he dropped down until his fingertips were wrapped around the edge of the bumper. As his toes scraped the gravel, he tried to run, but the bus dragged him too fast to keep up. His feet plowed the sharp gravel of the breakdown lane. A huge cloud of filth shotgunned from the tailpipe, straight into his gut.

Gaia power-pumped the gas pedal again. The bleeding wraith, blackened with soot, lost his grip, but managed to stumble a few steps before falling dick-first into the gravel.

Gaia floored it and shifted up through the gears as the bus gained speed, putting distance between them and the foiled attacker. She stared out the rear window through the mirror.

JC crawled up onto his knees and peeked out the back.

The brown police officer wiped condensation off a rear window pane.

As they watched, the dust cloud surrounding the terrorist became backlit by a mysterious flickering light growing in the background. A golden glow expanded from the interior of the police cruiser in the distance. The police car suddenly erupted into orange flames that engulfed the entire vehicle.

The light from the fire illuminated the crawling terrorist, backlighting him with a coronal outline.

When it was clear that they had escaped, JC clamped his hands together, dropped to his knees, and wept. "Praise Jesus," he said between sobs. He noticed the police officer's pistol stuck deep in a dark crevice. He laid down, stretched across the floor, pinched its handle as if it were a dead rat, and extracted it. He offered the gun to the officer. "Officer Nimrod, we owe you our lives."

The cop holstered his pistol, slammed the emergency door shut and stood up in the back. "Aight, lissen up!" he said. "I'm assigned to ride with this band for your own protection. I done told ya, the terrorists is trackin your cell phones. Turn em off and turn em in, right now!" He held his palm open to receive their electronics.

JC enthusiastically gave birth to an iPhone from the reluctant lips of the front pocket of his skin-tight black jeans, and Gaia — still driving like the Indy 500 — produced her droid from the depths of her flowing earth mother pajamas like a New York magician. The two musicians gratefully handed their cells to the handsome young African-American police officer with the buckwheat dread spikes, the tooth made of gold, and the giant diamond earring.

CHAPTER FIVE

### COURT

Earl Finkter had it down to a science. He stood in front of his bathroom mirror and pinned Old Glory through the fabric of his lapel, directly over the curve of his hardened aorta. He pierced a gold Latin cross immediately beside it; it was an old earring he had picked up at a yard sale and re-purposed as a pious prop. He practiced drawing his little two-shot derringer from his vest pocket where he always kept it, threatening his own reflection at gunpoint, careful to replace the little pistol inside the pocket at an angle where it could be produced in response to the slightest trespass.

Whenever he wheeled his client into the courtroom, he wanted everyone to know she was fucked up _bad_ — due to the actions or neglect of the defendants. To that end, a week earlier, he had given Dixie Clippens a couple hundred bucks so she could get her hair dyed to its natural gray, get an uber ride to shoplift some liquor, purchase some pay-per-view, and lay in a stock of meth. Not much meth. Just a little. Just enough to do the job and that's it.

For the three days leading up to this court appearance, Dixie sat awake in front of the boob tube, snorted hillbilly heroin, and remained indifferent to all nutritional sustenance except Aristocrat and frozen OJ.

Finkter pushed his crippled client down the courthouse hallway, making sure to steer the wheelchair so as to nick the ankle bones of any hot or ugly lawyer bitches who got in his way. He was amused by one of the hot ones when she had the audacity to challenge ADA by screwing up her face, whining an _owww,_ and fondling her new laceration through the sudden run in her L'Eggs.

When Finkter made an audible racket wheeling Dixie into Courtroom #346B, the judge (an old white man as fate would have it) frowned over top of his spectacles.

"I'm sorry, your honor, I had to take Mrs O'Connor to use the ladies' room," Finkter said. He portrayed a wise, down-home Christian attorney: fair, Franciscan, fat.

Since the crippled woman was represented by a lawyer, the judge's initial irritation turned to genuine human concern. After all, this trembling gray-haired client could be someone's beloved mother. The judge gave a dismissive wave of his ballpoint to grant the court's forgiveness for the noisy intrusion.

Upon seeing the horrid condition of Dixie Clippens in her wheelchair, the defense team huddled. The lawyer with the shiniest loafers popped his head up from the attorney's nest like a baby bird. He locked eyes with Finkter and nodded his head. Finkter knew this signified negotiations. He also knew this guy was a fag.

"Your honor, may we have ten minutes in the conference room with plaintiff's counsel?" the defense's homo lisped. "I believe we may be able to reach a settlement."

Finkter knew there wouldn't be a decent offer at this stage of the game, but he made a dramatic demonstration of whispering into his fake client's ear before heading back to the conference room.

As he sashayed out of the courtroom, Finkter's armpits began weeping. He hated his armpits, goddamn traitors to the cause. They gushed every time he got anxious. He had tried everything: risking early onset Alzheimer's with aluminum-laden antiperspirant, pasting self-adhesive sanitary napkins under his arms, even applying new age liquid colloidal silver into his pits with a paintbrush. Once, he swallowed two tablespoons of bona fide snake oil procured from a hippie co-op.

Nothing worked. The antiperspirant turned to napalm in his armpits. The pussy pads leaked, stunk, and grabbed everything with their sticky parts — not only his fingers, but also his underarm hair and delicate nipples. The colloidal silver left permanent light blue stains under his arms, like ugly birthmarks that would never go away. The snake oil gave him the shits.

It seemed that the only solution to this nagging problem — a solution that Finkter had never attempted — was doing the grunt work necessary to finish a couple more years of law school, pass a bar exam, and acquire an actual license to hang a legitimate shingle within the legal profession.

A sweat flood of Biblical proportions invaded his starched white shirt. It became an animated cotton map of Sherman's brutal advance through the South. It was the worst case of perspiration in his entire career. If anyone in the courtroom knew how to read sweat like it was braille — judge, juror, witness, reporter, bailiff, pedestrian, faggot — if any of them truly knew how to read the salty watermarks of an impostor, a fraud, a huckster, then Earl Finkter had himself a situation.

It had begun innocently enough. Finkter had been studying law in night school. And the poor hussy he had been banging was being taken to the cleaners by her husband.

When she wrapped her pair of prizefighters around Earl Finkter's cock, she helped convince him of his unflagging heterosexuality, despite occasional unusual urges that tempted him in confusing directions — directions that Jesus would not approve of.

Finkter saw that the cheating whore's husband was launching a three-pronged legal attack, direct to her capillaries, which was appropriate since this poor near-albino tramp appeared to have no jugular.

As he digested the legal argument contained in her paperwork, he recognized that a trifecta of logic, Latin, and oratory would be required to win her case. But by appearing _pro se_ , the lady would be short two of the three necessary skills — she would never be given the opportunity to demonstrate her special style of oral persuasion on either the prosecutor or the judge — so she was destined to lose her case.

The hearing was the following morning. Finkter agreed to accompany her for moral support, but that's all, he said, _I'm not a lawyer, yet,_ he told her.

She found him in the courthouse parking lot before her case. She slipped into the passenger seat of his Taurus, unzipped his fly and gave him half a blowjob as cops walked past the car without noticing. "I'll finish this up right after court," she promised, pinching the soft underbelly of Finkter's dick between two zipper teeth as she tried to close his fly.

Despite the injury, the half-blowjob was convincing enough that Finkter found himself addressing the judge as her attorney, under an assumed name, of course, and throwing enough legal bullshit around that no one seemed the wiser. He never got the second half of that blowjob, because the judge completely misunderstood the entire situation. Through some quirk of state law concerning courtroom etiquette, he sentenced Finkter's hysterical client to seventeen days in the hokey. Unfortunately, Finkter learned, seventeen days isn't enough time to qualify for a conjugal visit.

But the excitement and the drama of the courtroom was so alluring, Finkter soon turned his minor act of empathy toward the woman he'd been banging into a lucrative career. A career which, he told himself, actually saved human lives by gently encouraging the big three automobile manufacturers — through a series of routine insurance settlements — to briefly consider enhancing the safety of their products.

He walked into the club where the big three threw coin like candy. They had a budget and their job was to keep the courthouse docket clean as a men's room in a New York strip club. Nobody gave a shit what happened to small amounts of cash. Fifty thousand here, a hundred thousand there, it fell off trucks every day in Detroit's courtrooms.

All Finkter had to do was scoop some of it up for himself.

He'd get his law degree, he'd pass the bar and get his lawyer's license somehow, somewhere, sometime, when he had a chance. But meanwhile, he didn't have time, and he was making bank.

A Haitian breeze blew through Finkter's mind as the defendant's gay lawyer laid a settlement agreement on the conference room table. The stucco Caribbean villa overlooking his sailing paradise fluttered like a butterfly in his mind, just out of reach. The sun, the sand, the catamaran and the sexy, affordable island boys beckoned from the wide movie screen of his imagination. The proper documents were locked away in his safe: the cash, the phony birth certificate, fake driver's license, and the counterfeit passport. The tax-free interest in his secret offshore account was percolating, growing exponentially at high-risk third-world rates. The back-of-the-napkin calculations had been drawn, re-drawn, counted to the final payment. The contractor was half finished with the house. Just one more judgment, one more civil victory, one more big-ass motherfucker of a punitive damage award, and he was in his own personal utopia, out of this shithole forever.

His eyes scanned the agreement. He flipped to page two, three, flipped through all of them to the end. "Not good enough," he said. "But we'll take it anyway."

He couldn't stick around for this case. There was another case scheduled for trial in two weeks, a bigger one, a lot bigger.

He couldn't risk anyone noticing him and Dixie coming back to court using different names.

CHAPTER SIX

### MONDAY 2:13 A.M.

Shannon County Police Chief Red Dingledine was awakened by a distant sound. It was the irregular pulse of erratic combustion, and it was getting louder. He struggled to sit up on his elbows. His laptop was hot on his bare belly; he had fallen asleep while Skippy and Pierre were fucking in an eternal loop of ecstasy. He F6ed their repetitive moans, shutting them up so he could cock his ear and disentangle the noisy laptop speaker from the approaching noise outside. The rising racket was punctuated by a metallic clatter, as if a disembodied headlamp was being dragged along the road by its wires.

A beam of light sliced through the blinds from outside, flaring across the crooked crucifix mounted on the wall over the bed's headboard. The chief caught a glimpse of a rust-bucket as it swerved into his driveway and bottomed out. Through a crack in the blinds, he saw the steel frame of the car spark like a flintlock as it scraped against the concrete gutter ramp.

Pulling on his boxers, Chief Dingledine rolled his bulk out of bed and crossed to the window. He stuck a pair of pudgy digits into the venetians, splitting them so he could get a better view. He put his eyes up to the gap between the dusty white plastic slats.

An old Galaxie with an abstract paint job was in his driveway, spewing steam from a split radiator. Its green mist was backlit by an amber glow from the fading solitary headlight. A dry-rotted front tire had sunk deep into the chief's moist chemlawn. A broken headlight had been dragged along the road like a rag doll.

The car door opened and a naked, blood-spattered male figure ran in silhouette through the slimy fog toward the house.

The doorbell began dinging like a fire alarm.

Chief Dingledine picked up his pistol. He double-checked its magazine and racked it.

The doorbell rang nonstop. The naked man pounded on the front door. "Chief Dingledine!" he shouted. "Chief Dingledine, it's me, Officer Nimrod!"

Red Dingledine put one pupil up to the peephole in his front door. He got a fisheye view of the naked man, who was sooty and bloody. He could see the man's cheekbone was swollen. The man was nervously bouncing on the balls of his feet, cupping his gonads like they were robin's eggs. He was smeared black as a coal miner through his potbellied midsection, including his poor dick, which was dangling like a bait worm between his legs, dark as B-list performer on _downlowniggas.com_ , but smaller, a lot smaller. Underneath the soot and blood, he had a farmer's tan. His torso and legs were white as sun-starved ginger. There were short sleeve tan lines on both arms. His face and balding head were sunburned pink down to the bottom of his neck. Black hair hung over the man's left ear like he was a lopsided Hasidic Jew.

"It's me! It's Purvis Q Nimrod, sir! Your Officer of the Year!"

Through the peephole, Chief Dingledine saw a hurricane of enlarged nose pores followed by a huge bloodshot eyeball staring directly back at him. He unlocked all three of his deadbolts and opened the door. The naked man dashed inside, still bobbing and comforting his teabags.

"I found him!" Nimrod announced. "I found that nigger you put the thousand-dollar _ree-_ ward on!"

"You did what?"

"I found that nigger you put the _ree_ -ward on, sir!"

"What are you talking about?" Chief Dingledine said. "He's still locked up in Aberdeen til Monday. You couldn't have caught him."

"It was him, I swear," Nimrod said. "That's his car, ain't it?" Nimrod shot his thumb over his shoulder toward the car in the driveway.

Dingledine gazed out the window at the hand-painted Galaxie. It was still ejecting a putrid haze into the atmosphere. "What happened?"

"He took my uniform!" Nimrod said. "He beat me up and took it! Stripped me raw and left me nekkid, just like this!" He extended his arms to demonstrate his nudity.

"Where's your cruiser, son?"

"He stole it from me! And then he lit it on fire!"

"He lit a Shannon County police car on fire?"

"Burned it to a crisp!"

"Where is he now?"

"He's headed north on ninety-five, in some Jesus retard bus," Nimrod said. "He's wearing my uniform and pretending to be me!"

"North on ninety-five? In some Jesus retard bus?" the chief said. "What the fuck are you talking about? Aberdeen is north of here. Turnipseed wouldn't be headed north. He'd be headed south. But he ain't even been let out yet." The chief rubbed his chin, pondering Nimrod's testimony, then looked up and down the naked cop. "Why in the fuck would someone want to pretend to be _you_ anyway?"

"He's pretending to be a cop!" Nimrod said. "I pulled him over and then he jumped me and—"

"I got it!" the chief barked. He reached out and felt Nimrod's swollen cheekbone. "You need to go to the hospital, son."

"No, sir, I just need me some clothes, you got any I can put on?"

"You hurt anywhere else besides your face and legs and arms?"

"No, sir."

"You sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"Turn around and let me see."

CHAPTER SEVEN

### FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO

There had been a day, a long, long time ago, in Shannon County Juvenile Court, when a young Earl Finkter, barely fifteen years old, had been escorted before a judge. Flanked by the two attorneys that his parents had paid for with a hastily arranged cash-out second mortgage, the teenage white boy — who was accused of murdering the brown girl's father — appeared in a spotless church suit. He had a clean manicure. His sandy hair was cropped short, combed with a part like John F Kennedy, and perfectly oiled as if anointed with Holy Vitalis by Baptist angels.

Midnight Wright had taken her impressionable daughter to the white man's courtroom every single day of that trial, so her daughter would learn first-hand how the system shafted black people. For the most part, however, the little brown tomboy appeared to be ignoring the proceedings. Instead, she played quietly with her GI Joe.

The defense attorney seemed unnerved by the presence of such a sympathetic semi-family portrait, even though they were only negroes. "Your honor," the white lawyer said, "since this is a juvenile matter, could we please have public access restricted for the privacy of the minors involved?"

"Counselor, you know they are the victim's family," the white judge said.

"Yes, your honor, but..." and the well paid white lawyer waved his hand like a used car salesman toward the black widow and her semi-orphaned daughter, as if no words were necessary to make his white privileged point.

"They are the victim's family. They can remain in the courtroom if they want."

Throughout the trial, the Caucasian-colored plastic soldier with the six-pack chest and genderless undercarriage engaged in a variety of dangerous imaginary excursions for the benefit of good over evil. It crawled under seats. It climbed over the shoulders of strangers. It peeked at the judge, the prosecutor, and the accused.

The boy stumbled, trembling as he stepped into the witness stand. The prosecutor stepped forward to ask the number one question on everyone's mind. "Young man, did you shoot Officer Wright?"

With fear in his eyes, the boy shot a glance at his attorney. The white man nodded ever so slightly at the boy. It was a nearly imperceptible movement, born of a backroom deal.

The boy gulped. "Yessir, I shot him," he said. "But I had to, he was beatin me up."

"Objection, your honor."

"Overruled."

"We was just fishin and Officer Wright just up and started beatin us up," the boy choked between sobs.

For the first time in the trial, the little brown girl stopped playing with her action figure, and stared at the boy on the witness stand. Even at her young age, she considered the boy's emotional testimony to be suspiciously overacted. She looked back over her shoulder and gazed at her mother's dark face, trying to read from Midnight Wright's expression whether she was buying this bullshit or not. She wasn't. The little girl then looked around at all the white people to see if they were buying it. Yep, they were.

"I guess he was doing it just because we is white or something," she heard the boy tell the court.

The prosecutor had shown everyone in the courtroom, including the little girl and her GI Joe, how gunpowder residue had been discovered all over the boy's body, even in his downy, adolescent pubic hair.

Neither the girl nor her GI Joe ever figured out how the boy came to be naked enough to get powder on his gonads when he pulled the trigger, and why the old white judge acted as if that didn't matter, and why nobody asked how that could happen.

"And when his gun fell out of his holster, I had to pick it up and shoot him." The boy's eyes were shifty as he lied to the court. "It was self-defense. He was beatin the hell out of me and Red with his stick. He was going crazy. He was gonna kill us. He wouldn't stop!"

The little girl learned from the prosecutor that ballistics tests showed the gun that shot her daddy was the police chief's own gun, and that her daddy's gun was somehow sitting somewhere back at the station house, and how that was explained either as a theft by the black cop, or like it happened all the time that cops got their guns mixed up, like the girl's daddy just picked up the chief's custom pearl handle one day and mistook it for his own blue steel standard issue. She wondered which story the white folks really believed.

And even though she appeared to be quietly playing with her doll from that point on, she was actually listening intently. She figured out that Earl Finkter was Red Dingledine's best friend. And she came to realize that Red Dingledine was the town's police chief's son.

During the breaks, young Gayle learned from her mother how nobody gave a shit if the facts didn't fit together because the ones doing the deciding were all crackas – cops, judge, prosecutor, defense – and her dead daddy was just a nigger.

Midnight Wright clapped a hand over her daughter's eyes as a Kodachrome slide show of her father's fatal disfigurement was projected onto a Sky-Brite screen. The girl peeked through her mother's fingers at the slides, which were animated on the screen by the rippling breeze from a nearby air conditioner vent. The girl's father's injuries were discussed and dissected, picture after picture, slide after slide, for seventeen full minutes. Then the girl was allowed to watch the next batch of photos without interference. Those pictures documented the accused white boy's bruises, scrapes and abrasions. He had scrapes all over his ass, even where his clothes should have protected him.

"Yes, sir," said the second white boy on the witness stand, the boy who grew up to become Police Chief Red Dingledine. "I thought Officer Wright was going to kill Me-n-Earl, jus for being white or somethin, I guess."

"Objection, your honor."

"Overruled."

The other witnesses — the two black fishermen — never showed up in court. The girl heard that the first witness died mysteriously, because some old white doctor man fucked up his heart operation and let the fifth aortic artery gush nonstop like a bottle of Diet Coke with a Mento dropped in it. And then the dead man's fishing buddy never showed up in court, even though that very same man had told the negroes all over town that he saw the police chief with two naked white boys, and he saw one of them two boys shoot her daddy, when her daddy was down on the ground and shot already, and he sat up and shouted _NO DON'T SHOOT_ just before the kid pulled the trigger.

They didn't give a shit about none of that because the police chief and the state lab and the medical examiner all had their better explanations, and everybody was scared of Old Man Dingledine — the old police chief, Red's daddy, who had turned in an official report of a stolen pearl handled pistol to the State Police. Even the judge didn't want to mess with old man Elmer Dingledine. Nobody wanted a bunch of fines put on em, and their guns and moonshine took away in a traffic stop, and false witness being borne against them about possession of _marihuana._

The prosecuting attorney, eager to weave a tale of negro intrigue that would play upon the judge's own prejudice, occasionally cast an unnatural grin and wink in the girl's direction. He tried to feign some sort of inappropriate friendship with the pickaninny. The girl didn't realize it then, but the lawyer was indulging himself — nay, the entire court — in a condescending act of micro-aggression. But she figured something was up even if she didn't know exactly what it was.

One morning while her momma was in the shower before court, the little girl heated a butter knife over the gas stove and then melted a cute little folk art vagina smack dab in the center of GI Joe's taint. Joe didn't need no titties or long hair, because some of the most attractive girls didn't have none of that anyway. And later that morning, the little GI Joe with the secret pussy couldn't take it any longer. The little black girl with the barrel chest and tree-stump legs took a wide stance in the center stage of the courtroom facing the bench. Then, Miss GI Joe interrupted the court proceedings when she aimed her half-inch Colt .45 at the old white judge and graphically fired seventeen imaginary shots with full child audio directly into his face. With feeling. Genuine feeling. It was a hell of a lot of emotional bullets.

And even though all the white people stared at Midnight Wright — including the judge himself, his bailiff, and all the lawyers and paralegals on both sides — the little girl's stupid bitch momma didn't say nothing to make the little girl stop. She just sat there with an entire courtroom pew to herself, flipping Satanic fortune-telling cards onto the seat beside her.

So the white boy — Earl Finkter was his name — was convicted. But he only got two and a half years of juvie until he was eighteen, and then that's it, his record was expunged.

Of murder.

Of Gayle Wright's daddy.

Of Officer Benjamin Moses Wright.

The first nigger hired by the Shannon County Police Department.

CHAPTER EIGHT

### THE TICKET TO PARADISE

Launjeray arrived at Wanker Investigations, Inc. to pick up her next assignment. The new case folder was waiting in her cubicle. The suspect's name and address were block printed on its side. She left the office, loaded the address into her GPS, and merged her sunburned Voyager into city traffic.

When she stopped at the first red light, she opened the folder and was blindsided by a headshot of an ugly honky she immediately recognized. It was an 8 X 10 color blowup of the fat-ass rebel wheelchair bitch, the one from the county fair where T'Whirl had been conceived six years before. Launjeray would never forget that woman. Tailed her for a whole month and got nothing. If she was faking it, she was good.

In the picture, the woman had the look of a beaten dog. Her cheeks, chin and forehead exhibited signs of exotic, imaginative abrasion, but no significant laceration. It was so arts-fartsy, it couldn't have been the random result of a car crash. Launjeray started wondering if this bitch was a pro.

A horn blew. Launjeray looked up from the assignment folder, peered into the rear view at the car behind her, and floored it through the red light without looking. Another horn blew. Tires screeched. Launjeray kept booking it through the intersection because the ensuing crash didn't actually involve her vehicle. She couldn't afford that shit.

Launjeray had been busting her hump for Wanker Investigations for nine solid years without a vacation. People think private investigators are rolling in it, but Launjeray had been tailing suspects for nearly a decade on Walmart wages. She depended on the $300 bonuses she could get for bringing in video evidence that the insurance companies would then use to wiggle out of paying fifty or a hundred thousand for an injury that didn't exist in the first place. To get those kinds of videos and the bonuses they brought, she'd crawled through mud, snake dens and pit bull cages. She'd teetered on broken ladders, shuffled along high ledges, peeped through bedroom windows. She'd stalked, threatened, bribed and cajoled. Out of sheer necessity, she'd sunk so low, she'd become just another tooth in the grinding gears of the white man's corporatocracy.

And of course, T-Bone showed up like clockwork every payday to claim her entire goddamn paycheck — or else. Because, he said, they were a _Christian_ family. _He_ was head of the goddamn family and _he_ would decide how the goddamn money was spent. That's why they were always two months behind on rent, always a week behind the gas company's shutoff man, and always drinking Sunny Delite. Because T-Bone was always living on a promise and fucking around on a prayer.

Even with all the overtime, Launjeray was barely providing for her daughter.

God, how she hated leaving T'Whirl alone with that man. In a few short years, her little girl would be sprouting breasts, and who knows what would happen when T-Bone noticed that? She couldn't let this situation last that long.

At the next red light, she squeaked to an abrupt stop and ducked her head back into the file. The rebel flag bitch had changed her name. This time she was "Mabel Carpenter." Sixty-two years old.

The insurance report said she had been rear-ended by a truck. Hurt back. Same as last time.

The police report said some 18-wheeler played Ms Carpenter's decrepit station wagon like an accordion. They said if it wasn't for the seventeen worn-out tires surrounding Ms Carpenter, she'd be flat-out dead. Same as last time.

The truck driver said Ms Carpenter swerved in front of him and slammed on the brakes. Same as last time.

Ms Carpenter said it was a lucky coincidence that she was on her way to the dump with those tires when her car was struck by the 18-wheeler. Same as last time.

The police officer wrote the truck driver a ticket for following too close. Ms Carpenter got an attorney and sued. The insurance company ain't paying shit if they can help it.

Same as last time. Same as last time. Same as last time.

They hired Wanker to handle it, same as last time.

They gave Launjeray the case.

Same. As. Last. Time.

Launjeray knew this bitch must have been making thousands on these scams, if not more.

The light turned green and Launjeray busted it off the line. She put the minivan on autopilot and descended into deep concentration.

Over the years, she'd seen an endless river of amateur insurance fraud. Limpers, bellyachers, erectile dysfunctionaries. Sometimes, when she got the goods on them, when she caught them on video doing normal things, like walking down the sidewalk, or taking out the garbage, or fucking — even if they were fucking someone they were supposed to be fucking — she'd been tempted to offer the original videos for private auction, before any copies were made and turned over to Wanker and the insurance companies. Surely, she thought, most of the suspects she busted would pay more than a measly three hundred bucks.

She tried to imagine the consequences of dipping her toe into the dark pond. With the knowledge she had accumulated over the past nine years, she figured she had a pretty decent chance of getting away with a petty kickback here and there, maybe a misdemeanor slice of hush money, or some other minor percentage of the profit. That wouldn't be any different from what the fat cat banksters do on Wall Street every day of the goddamn week.

However, on the other hand, it _could_ turn into an ugly chess game between her and the suspects she was making deals with, and/or the management of Wanker Investigations (if _they_ ever found out about it) and/or the insurance companies, if _they_ ever found out about it. And then, of course, if it _really_ went south, there was always the remote possibility of a polite chat with a police investigator. But she could probably outsmart them.

If she had just a little bit of supplemental income, just a few extra bucks a month, she knew she could make her escape from T-Bone. And if things went really well, she might even have enough cash left over to help get her little girl through beautician's college, so T'Whirl would never have to do a job as menial as being a private investigator.

Launjeray parked in a shady spot across the street from the suspect's apartment building, so she could keep an eye on the front door. She tossed the file into the back seat. She didn't need the picture anymore. She knew who she was tailing.

At 10:23 a.m., Launjeray was startled out of her doze by a sudden bang. She focused her sleepy eyes on the front door of "Mabel Carpenter's" apartment building, and saw a shiny chrome wheelchair busting feet-first out of it. The woman rolled down the plywood ramp, swerved to the left, and muscled her wheelchair up the sidewalk, directly toward Launjeray's own minivan.

The woman rolled her chair like an expert, wheelie-hopping curbs and navigating pocked terrain with extraordinary efficiency. She wheeled onto a patch of grass at the far end of the apartment building's gravel parking lot. It had a picnic table like it was a park, but everyone brought their dogs there to crap.

Launjeray got out of her Voyager and casually followed the woman on foot.

The woman sniffed around to find the best spot. She unfurled a rebel flag beach towel onto the lumpy grass like it was a victory for the South. Then she embarked upon a theatrically overdramatized display of pain and suffering to lower herself onto her confederate rag.

Launjeray leaned against the park's perimeter fence and opened her banking app to check her account balance. She did it just to look busy. She knew she was overdrawn before she logged in.

The fraudulent bitch laid down on her elephantine gut to settle in for a suntan.

Launjeray looked up at a passing cumulus cloud. It could have been a model cloud for a motivational poster. "Lord," she said. "Send me a sign."

At that moment, the fat bitch reached behind her back and untied her bikini top.

"Thank you, Lord," Launjeray said. She picked her way across the park, avoiding dog shit, until she eclipsed the bitch's sun.

The supposedly crippled white whale looked up, shielded her eyes from the sunlight with her hand, and squinted at the black silhouette standing over her. Launjeray knew what Giant Casper was thinking. _What the fuck was some stupid nigger bitch doing, standing in my goddamn sun?_

"Nice day for a suntan," Launjeray said, accenting her greeting with a curt urban smile.

The woman gave her a narrowing glare in return. "What the fuck you want?"

Launjeray fired up a Parliament she'd bogarted from T-Bone earlier that day. Normally, she didn't smoke, especially menthol, but this was a special occasion. She swallowed the first puff sideways and stifled a cough. She pulled out her smart phone and started recording video. She leaned over and touched the lit cigarette's ember to a sensitive spot on the woman's soft underbelly.

The huge white whale immediately jumped to her feet and crouched in a fighting stance. All she had on was her rebel flag bikini bottom. Her breasts hung low. Her entire torso was covered with ugly tattoos. She looked directly at Launjeray's hand, which was outstretched, pointing the lens of a smart phone directly at her. "You bitch," the fat white woman murmured. "You fucking bitch..." She began performing an All Blacks haka, creeping forward, planting one hog leg in front of the other, her fury focused on the skinny black woman who was videotaping her.

"I'll take a thousand dollars!" Launjeray shouted, backpedaling to keep out of range of the advancing titties. "Right now, I'll erase it for a thousand dollars."

"Gimme that phone!" the gargantuan blubber woman roared.

"Alright, five hundred and I'll give you the whole phone."

"I ain't givin you nothin, you goddamn nigger bitch!"

Launjeray fled toward her minivan.

Fattie Reb was surprisingly fleet of foot. She bounded in pursuit of Launjeray, her tits orbiting in opposing directions. "Gimme that goddamn phone you fucking bitch!"

Launjeray ran from the crazy, near-naked fat woman and cut between the bumpers of two parked cars. The fat white woman chased her through the gap. Launjeray ran across the street, dodging a horn-blaring Ram and a screeching Audi. She turned and fled as fast as she could through the urban clutter. No matter how fast she ran, no matter how many corners she took or obstacles she dashed behind, the slap of thighs gained ground behind her. The topless, jumbo-titted redneck woman raced with surprising alacrity, until she got close enough to throw a roundhouse into the hoop dangling from Launjeray's right ear.

The punch sent Launjeray into a ground roll. Her smart phone skittered across the pavement, flipped over the double yellow lines, and came to rest in an oily pothole, where its outline was promptly impressed into the asphalt by the front tire of a fully loaded dump truck.

Launjeray made a run for her Voyager. The rebel flag bitch continued the chase until they were scampering back and forth around the minivan in a Mexican standoff. Passing vehicles tooted horns and construction workers catcalled.

Then the rebel flag bitch stopped. Launjeray leaned over, putting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. The two women were on opposite sides of the minivan, but they could see each other through the windows.

The topless hillbilly woman leveled her finger at Launjeray. "I'm gonna fucking kill you if you ever try anything like that again," she said. Then she dashed into the middle of the street between cars, picked up Launjeray's crushed smart phone, and walked away toward her wheelchair like nothing had happened.

Launjeray used her remote to unlock her minivan. She opened up the tailgate, jumped inside, slammed it shut behind her and locked the doors with the other button on her remote. She crawled over and around the rear bench seats. She sat in the driver's seat and tried to insert the minivan's key into the ignition, but her hand was shaking so much, she couldn't hit the slot.

And then jumbo naked tits filled the driver's window. She was back. She pounded her fists, threatening to spiderweb the glass. "DON'T YOU NEVER FUCK WITH DIXIE CLIPPENS, BITCH!" The enraged bull woman strutted around the perimeter of the Voyager, pulling at all the door handles one by one. When she confirmed they were all locked, she emitted a klaxon of inhuman rage and shook the minivan by its front bumper until Launjeray thought the woman was going to flip it over.

Launjeray leaned on the horn. She managed to jam the key into the ignition. She started the car and raced the engine to an extreme RPM. She put it in D before it had spooled down and tore out of the parallel spot, playing a minor game of bumper cars with the Prius that was parked in front of her. She looked in the rear view as she pulled into traffic. The rebel flag bitch had been knocked on her ass by the Voyager, but she was standing up now, her tits swinging, alternately jabbing both of her middle fingers high in the air as a fond farewell.

Launjeray blended into traffic and focused on settling her nerves. She descended into thought, and visions began dancing in her mind.

Visions of a profane, final sayonara to Wanker Investigations, Inc., and that goddamn sexist Don Fucking Wanker. Forever and ever, amen.

Visions of trading her shitty Voyager for a brand new Hummer.

Visions of her rat-ass apartment upgraded to a suburban mansion surrounded by perplexed white people.

No, make that an oceanfront mansion in Myrtle Beach surrounded by perplexed white bikers.

Visions of first class airline tickets to —

No, make that her own private jet, to anywhere she wanted to go.

Visions of beautician's college for T'Whirl.

Visions of Popeye's delivered anytime of day or night.

Visions of passing gas through polyester and throwing it all in the trash anytime she wanted, without having to wash it, like it was nothing.

Visions. Good visions.

This "Mabel Carpenter" bitch was her ticket out. Out of this hellscape of a town, this dead-end job, this fucking mistake of a relationship. It was the ticket to get away from anywhere and everywhere in the world where T-Bone could possibly find her and her beloved little T'Whirl.

All she needed was a slightly better plan, and she was sure she could pull it off.

CHAPTER NINE

### BEST FRIENDS

It was a few days before the unfortunate incident with the nigger and the grapefruit spoon.

A clumsy black lab puppy circled a dead, shadeless sapling until its four-foot rope was completely wrapped around the tree's trunk. It was about a year old. It had a ragged bullet hole through one ear: a permanent, dime-size hole, encrusted with a scab all the way around its circumference.

Someone had tied the dog up in the focal point between the direct sun and the hot reflection off the yellow cinderblock of the Shannon County Police Department. All the grass around the young lab had been murdered by the intense summer heat. The dog's water bowl was upside down. Its tongue was drooping from its mouth. It panted.

No human paid it any attention.

# # #

Shannon County Criminal Detective Red Dingledine was entitled to free donuts because he had a badge in the breast pocket of his plain clothes sport coat. Several times each day, whether he was on the job or not, he showed up at the Donut Hole to claim the caloric reward he was due for his faithful public service. He didn't have to show his badge. Everybody knew who he was.

On this particular day, Red had cleared his desk before heading over. He had closed all three of his live cases. He had arrested one dude because the guy was guilty. He had managed to get another dude indicted because that dude deserved to be indicted for something, even though not necessarily for those particular charges. And then he had filed the third folder away in cold cases, because it was black-on-black crime, so he'd never solve it. And who cared anyway? Nobody. They were just niggers. The more they killed each other, the less of them he'd have to dick with.

Red took a seat at the Hole's white formica counter at 10:53 a.m. His ass hung off both sides of the round stool. He nursed a cuppa joe and knocked out three raspberry creme crullers. The wretched ball bearings underneath the stool's seat cried for mercy every time he leaned over to take another bite.

When he finished the third cruller, Red examined the CoCola clock. Finkter was late. So late, Red would be forced to eat another donut. He rapped his knuckles on the countertop, and a waitress delivered his fourth donut without saying a word.

Red Dingledine enjoyed being the town detective. He liked having the power he lorded over the county's rank-and-file. He glared across the room while he chewed, visually challenging each and every Donut Hole patron to a staring match, one by every stinking one of the bastards, should they dare look him in the eye for an instant. He wished one of them would mutter something, anything, about a cop eating a donut, or about his weight, or about his law enforcement qualifications, so he could justify getting revenge. But they all knew better than to look him in the eye, or open their traps with any bullshit.

He gave each and every one of them his stone face, but none of them looked back at him. He engaged his eyeballs in a slow, silent, steady POV pan across the faces of all the customers, and then across the faces of all three of the elderly ladies behind the counter, especially the black one. Nobody dared to look at him. He stared down the octogenarian who hobbled in from the pharmacy. He spooked the infirm who had been wheeled over from the old folks' home. He creeped out the teenagers who were stuffing their faces on pot trips.

All of them bastards, every last one of them, knew that if they made one stereotypical comment, if they raised one petty constitutional issue, if they stepped out of line just a little, Detective Red Dingledine — the sole son of Police Chief Elmer Dingledine (who was best friends with every judge in the tri-county) — would pull them over tonight or tomorrow or next Tuesday and write them a ticket, for something, whatever, he'd make shit up even if they were innocent. Then he'd search their cars without a warrant, and he'd find weed or methamphetamine or oxycontin, whether they had any or not, and then he'd take their guns and moonshine away, never to be seen or spoken of again. And he might even put them in jail.

They knew he would do that because it happened all the fucking time.

All the civilians in Shannon County averted their eyes when Red Dingledine glanced in their direction.

A few years before, Red had gotten promoted from school crossing guard to detective, simply by seizing the opportunity to gun down a skinny jungle bunny, a raging antidepressant addict from Atlanta's worst ghetto. The bastard tried to rob Robertson's Drugs with nothing but a vague, misspelled threat scrawled on an inside-out empty soft pack of Newports. "GIVE ME ALL YOU'RE ACID + LSD," the note had said.

Back then, Red didn't have a police issue sidearm since he was just a crossing guard, but he always open-carried his own personal pistol wherever he went, even while on the job. Nobody asked nothing about it, especially his daddy, and it was his goddamn right under the Second Amendment to carry it anyway. So when he was in Robertson's picking up his jock itch creme, and the robber presented his scrawled demand that caused Mr Robertson to laugh out loud, Red drew his Glock and took the junkie's sorry ass out with three shots to the gut. Then he chased the bleeding fool out the back door, put two more bullets out of the seven-round clip in the addict's meatless brown back just for the extra experience, and finally put powder burns on the nigger's nipples as the sorry son of a bitch rolled over and went tits-up in the middle of the sunburnt parking lot for good.

Hell, after that brilliant career move, Detective Red Dingledine was making $18k, and this was the backwoods of Georgia in 1978. You could buy a lot of pussy for that kind of stamp back then. And since Red Dingledine never bought no pussy, and because he lived in his parents' basement, it was all good.

Red saw the reflection of headlights in the glass of the donut display case. They flashed brights twice. Red didn't turn around to look. He knew who it was. He stood up.

"You need a bag fer tha rest of yer donut, Detective?"

"Naw," Red said, stuffing the last half of it into his face. He turned and tried to look inconspicuous as he used his peripheral vision to watch a dirty white Cutlass back out of the parking lot. He eyeballed each of the patrons one last time on the way out to see if any of them displayed any flicker of recognition.

Every one of them avoided his eyes.

He pushed out the exit and trotted toward his county police detective's car: a flashy black GTO that would have been unmarked except for its plethora of antennas.

Within minutes, the detective's GTO was hiding under the dripping boughs of an aged willow beside a clear brook on the outskirts of town. It was parked beside the dirty white Cutlass. Red Dingledine sat behind the wheel of the cop car. Earl Finkter sat beside him in its passenger seat. The two men gazed into each other's eyes.

Both men knew Earl was the one poised to make the killer bucks. Only four years earlier, he had begun his studies at St. Genesius Christian Law School in Detroit. All he had to do, to get his hands on that lawyer's treasure, was to spend a couple more years getting that degree and then pass a bar exam. Not just in Michigan, though. If he flunked it there, he could still take any bar exam in any of the other forty-nine states, because they all had their legs spread wide.

The detective's eyes wandered around his old friend's face. Earl's jaw was as handsome as a Hollywood movie star's. His hair was full and youthful. His pickup lines were elegant and persuasive. "I pray every day that I will never see you again as long as I live," he said.

"I do the same about you," Earl Finkter said back to him.

"I don't wanna do nothin with you no more, Earl," Red said. "Them days is over."

"It ain't about none of that, Red," Earl said. "What we done together, that's all in the past."

"What do you want with me then?"

"I brung you down a police dog," Finkter said.

Red Dingledine's eyes brightened. "You did _what?_ "

"I got you a police dog!"

"Omigod! _Really?_ For _me?_ "

"Well, she's not an official police dog. She flunked out of the K-9 school across the street from my new office."

"Flunked out? Whaddaya mean?"

"That's how I got her. She's a total pussy. Pisses herself around gunfire, that's why she flunked out. She got shot through the ear and they kicked her out of the school. Her name's Missy."

"Missy." Red Dingledine got a faraway look in his eye.

"She can smell drugs and shit just fine. Ain't nobody gonna know the difference between her or no real police dog with a certified diploma."

"Ain't nobody in this town gonna give me no shit about my drug dog," Detective Dingledine said, rubbing the patchy stubble on his chin. "I can have me some fun with a dog like that. Where is it?"

"I got her for you because I thought maybe you could use her to help me out." Earl tossed a soft puffy envelope onto Red's lap. "I got a problem with a uppity nigger, Red."

Red fondled the envelope in his lap, tore a corner open and saw cash inside. Then he looked up and locked eyes with his old friend. "What kind of problems you having?"

Earl's chin wobbled like he was going to speak, but he didn't answer.

If anyone in the tri-county region noticed two grown men kissing in the county detective's unmarked GTO under the weeping willow beside the babbling brook a few miles outside the town limits, nobody ever said dick about it.

CHAPTER TEN

### SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

Georgia State Trooper Gayle Wright sat in her cruiser on I-95, muttering incantations while shuffling her tarot. She had dealt her triple card solitaire every midnight without fail for nearly four decades, waiting for the perfect hand, the cards that would finally allow her to tie up her loose ends, to provide closure, to liberate her from the evils of the past.

She knew Mars would attain peak influence over her life within hours. Jupiter was hard behind, opening an umbrella of positive energy over her constellation. Astrologically speaking, this was an amazing night, a night in which anything could happen.

At the stroke of midnight, she squeezed her eyes shut, whispered some broken Latin, and flipped the first card onto the passenger seat. This card would indicate the dominant power emanating from her past. She opened her eyes.

It was Justice, upside down.

Gayle had thrown down her share of shit over the years. Usually she was excited to get a goddamn Eight of Cups, which was the tarot equivalent of a stale fortune cookie in a sketchy sushi joint. Anytime she threw down a face card, it perked her up. But to start off with upside-down Justice? On this night, with the stars aligned like they were? That got her fucking attention.

She sat up straight, muttered in tongues, rolled her eyes up into her skull, and flipped her second card. This card would represent the present.

It was The Fool. The wild card.

Gayle Wright knew this meant she was headed for a new beginning. She hoped it involved revenge. Long awaited, sweet revenge.

Her heart thumped.

She poised her thumb to flip the third card. But before she did, she reached up and switched her radar unit off. Fuck those nine-over honkies speeding down to the Magic Mouse. Let em go. The State of Georgia was overflowing with revenue from her tickets. They didn't pay her enough for all the risk she had taken during all those years on the graveyard shift, pulling over all them drunk, gun-toting cracka rednecks at 2:17 a.m. in the morning on this godforsaken stretch of interstate, rednecks that were still flying the goddamn rebel flag as if their great-grandaddies hadn't never had yankee muskets shoved up their asses and the trigger pulled a hundred years ago.

"Wright!" The sergeant's voice blasted through the police car's radio. It was so sharp and fast, Gayle jerked from fright. "We need you to head down to Shannon County right now for a 10-35. They got a tip on a smuggler with drugs hidden inside a spare tire. They're gonna pull him over and open it up. They need our help. You're the only officer I got that can do it."

_Shannon County._ Just the mention of it sent chills down her spine. With the exception of the occasional scamper through south Georgia on her way to the annual St Pete LGBT Pride Parade, Gayle hadn't spent a nickel's worth of time inside the boundaries of that godforsaken shithole for the entirety of the previous thirty years.

That was because Shannon County was where Gayle Wright's inner pain was born. It was where her daddy had laid his head down on a rotten poplar and died of four gunshot wounds to the head, stomach, chest and throat. It was where her momma had took her to the trial of that cracka boy who'd got away with pulling the trigger.

The cards were lining up. Fast.

Gayle Wright keyed her mic. "Aight," she croaked. She wasn't gonna complain about the hundred and eighty-three mile drive. She wasn't gonna bellyache about a surprise overnight assignment. She wasn't gonna bitch about having to deal with those fuckwits down in Shannon County.

Because her tarot told her she was in for something big. Something real big.

She shifted her State Police cruiser into D, planted her fat foot on the brake, fluttered her eyelids, and muttered a prayer. She flipped her third and last card onto the passenger seat. This card would reveal her future. She was afraid to look, but she did anyway.

It was _The Lovers_. And it was right side up.

Gayle gulped.

The fucking _Lovers?_

What could The Lovers possibly have to do with her?

She hit the emergency lights and floored it, southbound toward Shannon County.

# # #

Officer Gayle Wright tuned her State Police comm to the Shannon County frequency. "Shannon dispatch, State 317."

"State 317 go ahead."

"State 317 in position, 95 South at the AVO turnaround, milepost 44."

"Roger that. Standby."

"Standing by, State 317." Gayle parked her cruiser for a view of the southbound lanes. She left it idling, set the a/c to the perfect cool temp, and tilted her seat back as far as it would go.

She whipped her dog-eared deck out of her breast pocket and propped her three amazing cards upright on the dash, leaning them back against the windshield, in a row just the way she had drawn them from the deck a few hours before.

She stared at her three cards, examining the pictures drawn on them, searching for clues. There was ancient truth buried in those cards, even in the pictures. Ancient, supernatural truth that had been passed down from witch to wiccan for generations.

They were magic.

After three hours and seventeen minutes of judicious study and occult meditation, Officer Gayle Wright's entire jumbo, juiced-up amazon body had a middling case of the jitters, like she'd shotgunned a six-pack of Red Bull and stayed up all night. All of her nerve endings were hopelessly afire, hyped up on the anticipation of prophecy becoming reality. _When was it going to happen_? she wondered. She threw her empty Red Bull can into the passenger floorboard. It landed with a clank amidst the other five she had tossed down during the long night.

Maybe she had zoned out, staring at those cards for so long, or maybe she hadn't. She didn't know. The police radio suddenly blared with two cops shouting into their mics at the same time, their voices excited, stepping all over each other. Maybe they woke her up, maybe not. She couldn't tell. Her mind was befuddled by twenty seconds of indecipherable syllables — word salad, tossed inside a wail of electronic hiss and feedback. The cacophony sounded so otherworldly, so much like an alien invasion, that she pulled her pistol out of its holster and scanned the daylight sky for flying saucers. That's when she realized the sun was shining bright and she had to piss bad. She opened her car door, plopped her two black leather oxfords on the gravel, and squinted around the interstate turnaround, looking for a bush she could take a whizz behind.

She popped a lithium and swallowed it dry. _Maybe I should pop an extra one,_ she thought, _just in case I run into something that would piss me off real bad._

At that instant, a wildly painted Ford Galaxie flew past, southbound at a fantastic rate of speed. It was a clattering junker pursued by a Shannon County black-and-white with red lights flashing, and another cop car — a detective's solid black unmarked cruiser with blinking lights behind its grille. Both cop cars were wailing their sirens to beat all.

Gayle immediately recognized this event as a sign from the stars. She forgot about the UFO invasion and holstered her gun. She plopped her ass back in the driver's seat, swung her fat feet back into the floorboard, and slammed her car door shut. She scooped her three glorious tarot off the dash, reunited them atop the holy deck, and stashed them in her breast pocket. She flipped on her emergency lights and floored it while still raising her seat back.

She'd piss later.

Gayle moved up from being the third-place pursuit vehicle to second place when the wild Galaxie they were chasing unexpectedly swerved across three lanes of the interstate and bailed out down an exit, tricking the lead county black-and-white into an uncontrolled spinout. She caught a glimpse of the local cop as his car — skidding backwards — rotated through her field of vision in a swirl of black rubber smoke. The cop driving that car was a kid with pimples. He looked like he was seventeen. _How young do they hire them down here_? she thought, and then, _Did I take that lithium or not? I can't remember._

She jerked her cruiser's steering wheel to the right just in time to follow the Galaxie and the unmarked county cop car down the ramp. The quick maneuver launched her into momentary weightlessness as the exit ramp descended out from underneath her cruiser faster than the car's forward momentum would allow it to drop. A prescription pill bottle levitated in zero gravity. She snatched it out of mid-air. When her tread bit the blacktop again, she tailgated the Shannon County detective's car as it chased the Galaxie through the red light in the intersection below. As she blew through the cross street, she saw the child cop in the black-and-white catching up in her rear view.

She thought the pursuit was finished when the crazy Galaxie skidded halfway through a right turn and sideswiped two antique jalopies. But the dude in the Galaxie — she could see now that he was severely black — wasn't finished fucking with them yet. He punched it, spinning a tire in roadside gravel, dodging oncoming cars through head-on traffic like he was a horny salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Gayle knew that that nigga was operating on pure animal instinct, and he was doing a damn good job of it. She wondered what his tarot reading would have looked like back at midnight. And what it would have looked like right at that moment. _An Incremental Reading: used in times of rapid change,_ her book said, verbatim. She had memorized that shit. She chewed two time-release capsules.

Gayle maintained pursuit as the Galaxie ran a minivan off the road, then swerved left and headed south on an access road parallel to the interstate. The black dude was giving his Galaxie's small-block motor all the go-juice she could swallow. What that brotha lacked in speed, he made up for with impeccable technique. Gayle was truly impressed with his valiant effort. He was relentless.

Once the three cop cars were chasing the Galaxie in a grille-to-tailpipe conga line on the straightaway, Gayle broke to the left, slipped two of her wheels down into the soft shoulder, and held her accelerator to the floor until she muscled her way up beside the lead Shannon County unmarked cruiser.

They were doing 105 miles per hour, side-by-side on a two-lane road that, technically, was a legal thoroughfare for two-way civilian traffic. She glanced over at the local cop. He looked back at her. They locked eyes for a millisecond.

He was a 40-something detective in a blue polyester blazer.

She was the daughter of the nigger cop who'd been murdered in Shannon County thirty years before.

Gayle saw the detective's expression change. He looked surprised, as in: _surprised to see her._

She figured she looked surprised to him, too. Because she recognized the muthafucka.

He was Justice, upside down.

She cracked open all four barrels on the State of Georgia's big block, passed Detective Red Dingledine, and took the lead pursuing the Galaxie.

She saw it was a family in that car they were chasing. An interracial family. The dark black dude was driving. He was the blackest man she had ever seen. Riding shotgun was a white woman, smoking pot. A brown kid was standing up in the back. He looked to be a tween, straddling the center hump over the car's drive shaft, which was wildly spinning under the floorboard just below his feet. The lad had his elbows over the front seat, but his head was swiveled backwards. His innocent little face peered at her through the rear window.

They got up to one hundred and ten American miles per hour on Gayle's state-calibrated speedometer. She noticed the Galaxie's driver — who must have been the father of the family — was looking at her in his rear view mirror. She could intuit by the wrinkle of his brow and glaze on both his eyeballs that he absolutely despised her to the very core of his being, utterly loathed her with more animosity than he had for any _thing_ or any _body_ , including any white demon. In fact, if there existed any expression of disaffection more powerful than red hot molten-lava _hatred_ from the depths of hell, the brotha's eyes was dishin it out in spades.

The vortex from the speeding cars rattled an _End State Maintenance_ sign as the pavement abruptly ran out. One by one the Galaxie and then the cop cars dropped onto the gravel road, kicking up an opaque white dust cloud that enveloped everything, reducing visibility to zero.

Suddenly, a corroded chrome muffler smashed through Gayle's windshield and buried itself in her passenger seat, smoking from its own scorching radiance like it was a meteorite fallen from outer space. It was stamped _John Deere._

Gayle slammed the brakes and slid a half-bootleg to the left, coming to a stop sideways in the road as the smoldering nylon seat filled her car's cabin with toxic fumes. She popped her door open, stood halfway up out of it on her left leg, and peered across the roof of her car into the dust cloud, trying to figure out what was going on.

Detective Red Dingledine's unmarked cruiser emerged from the white dust behind her at ninety miles an hour. His eyes got round. He pushed the steering wheel away from his face. His car skidded straight as an arrow and stopped three inches from Gayle's door.

The kid's black-and-white emerged from the dust, locked its wheels on the gravel road for a hundred feet, and then rear-ended Dingledine's car, shoving it forward. Gayle jumped aside just before the grille of Dingledine's car poked a three-thousand-dollar dent into her state cruiser's door, slamming it shut where Gayle's leg had been half a second before.

All three cops watched the dead Galaxie appear like a ghost out of the settling dust cloud. It was smoking in a farmer's field, where it had come to rest after spinning around backwards. Its front bumper was frowning. Its radiator was spewing. One rear wheel was cocked up at an angle like it was a giant dog taking a piss.

Seventeen thousand spare tractor parts had been broadcast across the tilled field like seed corn. An old white dude in denim overalls lay on his back in the dirt beside a green engine block. He was moaning.

The pimply kid cop ran up beside Gayle, fumbling with his holster. He was trembling from fear, unable to draw his weapon.

Gayle smacked the back of his head with her open palm. "Put that hurt man in your car," she said, pointing to the moaning farmer laying on the ground.

The kid glanced at her, his teeth clamping his tongue, still struggling with his holster, as if she had not spoken a word.

The white woman in the Galaxie's passenger seat shoved her door open with a naked foot. She tumbled out and crawled toward the camouflage of the knee-high cornfield. She looked like a rebel-tattooed cockroach with a bloody scalp. She was hacking from the smoke rising from the joint still clamped between her ruby lips.

"I said put that hurt man over there in your car, boy." Gayle kicked the point of her black oxford into the crack of the child cop's ass, burying her steel toe so deep, it kissed his tight little rosebud.

The kid grabbed his ass cheeks with both hands and hopped in circles. "Ow-wow-wow-wow!"

_Cute kid,_ Gayle thought.

Detective Red Dingledine strutted past Gayle with his pistol drawn, heading toward the driver's side of the Galaxie, where the black man appeared to be gradually realizing he was still alive.

The brotha opened his door and stumbled out, holding his unconscious brown son in his arms. He was barefoot, wearing silver Detroit Lions athletic shorts and an antique white wifebeater.

The little boy's Toy Story t-shirt was sopping with blood. He was so limp, it was impossible to know if he was dead or alive.

Detective Red Dingledine waddled toward the brotha and pointed his pistol. "Put yer hands up, boy."

The black man stared at Dingledine. Crimson liquid glistened, drooling down over shimmering ebony, dripping onto his shirt. He fell to his knees and teetered, still holding his unconscious child.

State Trooper Gayle Wright stepped through the tequila cloud surrounding Detective Dingledine and knocked his pistol arm upward. A bullet cracked and flew over the black man's left shoulder. The gun's muzzle blast stung Gayle's skin. She grabbed Dingledine's shooting wrist and yanked him toward her while twisting his hand backwards to point the business end of the pistol away. She bent his wrist so hard, she forced him to drop down on one knee. Then she wrapped a fake-nailed claw around the polyester-suited detective's face and pushed him backwards until he released his pistol and fell on his ass. "Put your dick away, muthafucka," Gayle said. She threw the detective's pistol overhand, deep into the cornfield, where it fired off a wild ricochet as it bounced. Then she turned and swaddled the injured boy between her enormous breasts, just before the blackest man in the world passed out and fell face-first down into the dirt.

Gayle Wright interrupted the kid cop's hurt ass dance when she shoved the bleeding lad into his arms. "Take him and that man to the hospital now!" As the pimply cop took the bloody boy into his arms, Gayle saw his name badge. It said:

[ NIMROD ]

Detective Red Dingledine stood up from where Gayle had planted him and began examining his detective uniform for damage.

Officer Gayle Wright walked to the black man lying on the ground and straddled him with her tree-trunk legs. The man was semi-conscious, bleeding all over and hurt bad, but he was still breathing. She pulled his arms together behind his back and cuffed him. She grabbed the handles on the man's wifebeater, then eyeballed Detective Red Dingledine. "Grab his feet," she said. "We'll put him in your car."

Dingledine dusted off his slinky sport coat while gazing into the cornfield, looking for the spot where his pistol might have landed. "Aight," he finally said to Gayle, "but not til you and me have a look in his trunk first." He limped around Gayle at enough of a distance to avoid her reach, then leaned into the Galaxie's driver's door, emerging with the key ring in his hand.

The pimply teen cop helped the limping farmer past them, guiding the injured man toward his black-and-white.

Dingledine strutted to the Galaxie's trunk, flipping through the keys on the key ring he'd retrieved from the car's ignition. He stopped, appearing to be confused. Then he turned back around, tossed the keys into the dirt near the car, and walked back to his own unmarked cruiser. He opened his driver's door, leaned in, fumbled through the center console, and then came back out holding an oval Ford key. He returned to the Galaxie and inserted the key into the trunk lock. Before he twisted it, he produced a box cutter from his pocket, thumbed it open, and held it up for Gayle to see. "We got word from an informant that he's got a pound hidden inside the spare tire."

"We can search the car later," Gayle said. "Right now our priority is getting all these hurt people to the hospital."

The kid cop spun his black-and-white around and sped back toward town with the farmer and the bloody brown child in his car, his lights flashing and siren wailing. He was gone in a flash.

Gayle bore witness as the white motherfucker that she hated turned the key and lifted the trunk lid. The tub of the trunk was a cornucopia of trash. The spare tire was laying on top of the heap. A ragged grin had been cut into its sidewall like a Halloween jack-o-lantern. It was splayed open like a cheap whore.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Dingledine shouted. He rolled up his right sleeve and reached into the hollow guts of the tire, threading his bare arm past the cut steel wires into the spare's gaping hole. He felt around inside the tire, his face to the sky as he focused on his sense of touch. His expression revealed he was finding zilch. Even though the sharp wires threatened to puncture the soft underbelly of his pale arm, he was determined to find the damning evidence, so he reached deeper. But there was nothing to be found inside the spare tire. It was empty. " _GOD-DAMMIT!_ " he shouted as he pulled his hand out, lacerating his fair skin. "Motherfucker!" he shouted, clamping his left palm over droplets of blood emerging from the cuts on his right arm. "Goddamn nigger double-crossed us!"

Red Dingledine ran to the unconscious black man on the ground and kicked him in the ribs with his undercover loafers. "I'll teach you to fuck with me, you goddamn nigger!"

Gayle Wright aimed her standard issue State Police semi-auto directly toward the center of Red Dingledine's head. Two times out of three at the police shooting range, her bullets punched through the paper a few inches above and to the left of her aim. So she shot directly at Red Dingledine's pulsing temple, giving him the benefit of the odds.

Dingledine's foot was cocked for his next kick to the black man's ribs, but he froze when the bullet skimmed through his gray aura. He twisted his head toward the androgynous brown bitch in the State Police uniform. "What the fuck are you doin?"

"I wasn't born yesterday," Gayle Wright said, aiming her pistol between Dingledine's eyes. "You done set this nigga up. Get your cracka muthafuckin ass back in your car."

"You ain't gonna do shit, you nigger dyke bitch."

Gayle shot another bullet directly toward Dingledine's face.

Dingledine's head ducked two inches but unfortunately neglected to explode.

"Don't fuck with me," Officer Gayle Wright said. "I'll kill your shiny white ass in a coon dyke's heartbeat."

Multiple sirens wailed from a mile away; their cries approaching.

"That's my backup," Dingledine said. "You're gonna be up shit creek when they get here."

Gayle answered him with a third gunshot.

Dingledine stumbled and fell on his ass. He felt his right ear and then looked at his hand. There was a streak of blood on his fingers. "You in a shitload of trouble," Dingledine said from his seated position. He clamped his palm against his ear to stop the bleeding.

"Shut the fuck up and don't get up," Gayle said. She kept her pistol pointed toward Dingledine as she poked through the trash in the Galaxie's trunk with her free hand, looking for evidence.

That's when she saw it: a twelve-pack of dynamite, duct-taped in a bundle with a detonator stuck in the middle. It had rolled into the far back corner of the trunk. There was a loose wire attached to the detonator. The force of the crash must have ripped it off whatever hot electrical source it had been hooked up to. The trunk light socket had a few strands of wire sticking out of it — strands that matched the detonator wire. She realized that the brotha laying semi-conscious on the ground had set a trap to kill Shannon County Detective Red Dingledine.

Her pistol started shaking. A tear formed in the corner of her eye. She looked at Red Dingledine and considered pulling the trigger again. The detective looked back at her with defiant eyes.

She shifted her gaze to the brotha bleeding on the ground. He was mumbling something. Maybe it was about regret. Or hope. Or white muthafuckas.

For the first time in her life, Georgia State Trooper Gayle Wright was in love.

The sirens were halfway there. Suddenly, she needed to make the biggest decision of her life. She didn't have time to wait til midnight. This was a special occasion. She needed an interim reading. Bad.

She snuck her tarot deck from her breast pocket and palmed it into the trunk while keeping a side-eye on Dingledine. She laid it down on the trash pile and flipped the first card over beside the deck. Her heart skipped a beat. It was The Fool, right side up, just like last time. _What were the chances of getting that card again so soon?_

Gayle knew that card was telling her that her past had presented an opportunity. A good opportunity. An opportunity right in front of her, laying on the ground, wearing her handcuffs.

"I'm gettin up now," Dingledine said, moving his legs forward like he was going to stand.

"Shut the fuck up," Gayle said, switching her eyeline to stare him down.

Dingledine froze.

Gayle returned sixty percent of her meager attention to the trunk. She flipped the second card. This card represented the present. It was The Lovers, but it was upside down. A rush of emotion welled up from her bosom. This couldn't be right. It was statistically impossible to randomly draw these same two cards only a few hours after she had previously drawn them. And she had just fallen in love. It couldn't be upside-down. It felt so right.

Then she remembered she had forgotten to shuffle the deck.

_Maybe it's still valid,_ she thought, _because, after all, it's fate. If fate didn't want me to shuffle the cards, then fate made me forget, because these cards was the fate that fate wanted me to have, no matter what._

Gayle knew the third card would reveal her future to be some variation of Justice. She looked over at Dingledine, still sitting on his ass because he was a pussy.

Gayle knew this was the moment she had been waiting for. If Justice was right side up, she'd execute the goddamn daddy-murdering detective right then and there. If Justice was upside down, she'd let him go.

Two Shannon County police cruisers slid to a stop, followed by Police Chief Elmer Dingledine in his luxury cruiser with the blinking red bubble-gum light.

Four local cops got out of their cars with shotguns. All white.

Chief Elmer Dingledine emerged with a cigar in his cheek and a pearl-handled revolver in his hand. In his other hand was a cane. The elderly cracka could barely get out of his car.

Red Dingledine stood back up when he saw his daddy.

Gayle didn't give one single fuck about any of them cops. Nothing could stop the cards, not even whitey with badges. Those cards were fate, and fate didn't step aside for no one. She was ready to do whatever they dictated.

She flipped her third card over inside the trunk to find out which way Justice would show up.

To her surprise, it wasn't Justice at all.

It was The Tower. The card of Mars. The card of war.

And it was upside down.

The four local cops racked their shotguns.

Gayle Wright looked up at the new arrivals and offered a sour smile. She slipped her pistol into its holster, leaned into the depths of the trunk, and quickly shoved the dynamite underneath the grinning spare tire, hopefully before any of the other cops had a chance to see it. Then she closed the Galaxie's trunk lid tight, spun back around to face the white posse, and pissed her pants.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

### BIRTHDAY

Da'Ndre had mastered seven-eighths of Jimi's solo when the clinking of Officer Malone's key ring interrupted. "Haaaappy birrrrth-daaayyyyy, mutha-fuuuuuckaaaaa," the beefy brown guard sang as he turned the deadbolt and tossed Da'Ndre's personal belongings onto the floor of the detention cell. "Goldstein," Malone said, "I give your ass one solitary month before you get sent away to the big house."

Da'Ndre feigned interest in the power chord he was strumming so he wouldn't have to look up at the old man's judgmental expression. "Why, thank you, Guard Malone," he said.

"In case you're wondering...nobody's here to pick your sorry ass up," Malone said. "You're a mothafuckin loser, Goldstein. Nobody wants you in their life, specially not me, so wrap it up, get your shit, and get the fuck outa here."

Malone marched away, leaving the overwhelming challenge of freedom on Da'Ndre's shoulders. Freedom to roam the earth. Freedom to make his own decisions. Freedom to fail. "Fuck you, Malone!"

The old guard kept walking.

Da'Ndre was gripping the neck of the ratty guitar like it was a caveman's club. He considered throwing it down the hallway toward the back side of Malone's head, but the browbeat five-string had proven itself to be a noble companion over the past few years. He flipped the guitar in his hands, memorizing every scratch and dent in anticipation of saying goodbye. He set the old acoustic in the corner for the next stupid punk, wiping a salty drop off its varnish with the sleeve of his juvie jumpsuit.

# # #

A few years earlier, Irving & Esther Goldstein had had their hearts wrenched by a compelling story in the local newspaper. For days, they obsessed over the gory halftones of the car crash. They expressed amazement about how Da'Ndre's young, malleable skull had violated the Galaxie's windshield, and how the lad had miraculously survived. They heard through the Hebrew grapevine how the underprivileged boy's parents were thrown in jail. They saw the interracial couple's mug shots broadcast on the television news, and learned how the pair had been declared unfit to retain custody of the child.

Two months later, the Goldsteins uncorked a bottle of seventeen-year-old Chateau Lavandier and allowed it to breathe for an entire hour while they engaged in a serious heart-to-heart. The Goldsteins were good people: liberal, headstrong Zionist apologists with symbiotic obsessive-compulsive disorder. Yin and Yan.

Cloistered inside their slate-roofed suburban sanctuary, the aging, childless couple turned down the volume on Jimmy Cliff in _The Harder They Come,_ and neglected the plight of 1970s Jamaican poverty that was portrayed on their ultra HD widescreen, as they proceeded to discuss this unanticipated opportunity to assuage their societal guilt. They wanted to help the poor brown boy overcome his close call as a near victim of vehicular manslaughter. They wanted to reverse the relentless hammering of the white man's downpression that had defined the boy's disastrous upbringing. They wanted justice. And maybe they wanted a kid before they both died. They lit up a spliff and pondered.

The elder couple were graced with the shared curse to give of themselves to the world, especially to the _African-Americans_ who needed so much help. They had been sending monthly charity checks to inner city food banks for years. They had contributed to housing assistance programs. Occasionally they donated to sketchy negro church charities. They always gave as much as they could afford. But they had never gotten closer to helping an actual brown-skinned person except by participating in a variety of arms-length financial transactions through nonprofit intermediaries, or by buying weed.

Perhaps it was time for the childless couple to indulge themselves in a once-in-a-lifetime project to save a young black boy from his unfortunate lot in life. After all, they were in their mid-sixties, and they were not getting any younger. Before long, it would be too late.

Irving and Esther Goldstein submitted their formal application to Judge Weinstein — even though it wasn't Judge Weinstein's case — offering to adopt the young boy as their very own son.

Since there were no Christian takers nor qualified married couples of the boy's own multiracial caste, the Goldsteins were awarded formal custody of the testy lad by the local judiciary. The maturing Jewish couple, who had originally met in Psych 201 while they were Harvard undergrads, joyously received the promising young chestnut into their suburban home, which they had meticulously converted into a reasonably comfortable, semi-secular Skinner Box.

They inculcated the lad with the superstition of Seder and the succulence of gefilte fish, the joys of Hanukkah and cancellation of Christmas, the value of a dollar and finer techniques of wholesale haggling. Their cup of compassion runneth over. Even young Da'Ndre's penis received its own special bar mitzvah on a bone-frozen Tuesday in late December of Da'Ndre's thirteenth year.

Da'Ndre had felt a welder's torch shooting a flame on his raw tonsils. His throat had become a mortal battleground between his own exhausted white blood cells and a Roman army of relentlessly invading streptococcus. Hydraulic pressure threatened to burst the puffy, swollen pouches in the back of his throat. His breath was strangled as if he were choking on rubber cement soaked in battery acid.

The mentholated candy drops, the generic Rite-Aid syrup, the numbing spray — they were no match for the agony engorging his inflamed soft tissue. He felt like he was gargling a furious school of starving piranha.

" _Dad_ " and " _Mom_ " — at least that's what they called themselves — drove right past a trio of bona fide healthcare centers, despite the fact that all three of them cheerfully admitted negro patients with Jewish health insurance. In intense pain, Da'Ndre endured jarring plunges into the depths of gaping winter potholes, an endless jet stream of Yiddish claptrap, and a grueling side trip for an unnecessary 85-octane top-off at the cheapest off-brand gas station in town.

Da'Ndre curled up in the back seat and tried to sleep. But Irving Goldstein kept his Jag's entire interior triple-treated with an ArmorAll knockoff. The seat was so slippery, Da'Ndre slid down into the floorboard with every curve, swerve and red light.

The Star of David finally made its appearance at the trailing edge of the boy's fading consciousness. The backlit religious trademark was mutant and cockeyed, an animated distortion through the car's rear window as they slowed to a stop. Irving threw the Jag into P on the reception carport outside the emergency room. "I'll be right back."

Da'Ndre dragged himself upright, propping himself up in the back seat. His head was swimming. He felt nauseous.

Da'Ndre and Esther watched Irving skip onto the curb. The elder man's navy overcoat flared in the wind, a silhouette against the ER's fluorescent backdrop. He strode through the automatic doors like an official diplomat with an urgent message from Yahweh.

Esther Goldstein twisted around in the front seat, scanned Da'Ndre like she was a West Bank border guard. "How do you feel?"

Da'Ndre answered with a strep-muted gurgle. He half-expected some of the piranha to slip out.

Inside the ER, Irving pantomimed his predicament to a sleepy, lab-coated data input clerk, a dumb looking blonde who was well versed in the art of conspicuous nodding. Irving pointed to his bobbing larynx. It looked like he said "ahhhh" and he gave the clerk the universal choke sign with his hands around his own throat. Then he drew a circle around his crotch area, like a vertical halo in front of his wiener.

Two orderlies came out and accosted Da'Ndre like Israeli defense forces. They hefted him by his forearms, plopped him into a plush wheelchair and rolled him inside the belly of the Jewish hospital.

"Breathe deep," said a foreign-accented masked man in baby blue pajamas, as he clamped a crystalline silicone mask over Da'Ndre's nose and mouth. Da'Ndre inhaled the gas. "Count backwards from one hundred," the anesthesiologist said.

"Ninety-nine," Da'Ndre said. Then he immediately became aware of two clocks above two doors as sexy twin nurses approached him. His eyes were crossed, drunk from the anesthetic. He realized that he was in a completely different room. He struggled to focus his eyes; the twin nurses merged into a single hot Polynesian princess. She smiled softly, and penetrated his ear canal with her electronic thermometer. She clicked the button. The little handheld's beep, a simple electronic chirp, was personal, intrusive and oddly erotic in the hands of this golden toned goddess. The rustle of her polyester gown sent chills down his spine.

"How ya feelin big boy?" the sexy nurse asked.

"Aight," Da'Ndre croaked.

"We gave you a shot of penicillin for your strep throat," she said, lifting his bedclothes to peek underneath. She reached toward Da'Ndre's crotch and adjusted something.

"Ow!" Da'Ndre discovered the piranha had migrated from his throat to his privates. His crotch was on fire. He peered at his groin, only to see a medical diaper encircling his waist, tucked under his taint like a Japanese sumo wrestling costume. It sported an oblong red stain, broadcasting news of a disaster that had tragically occurred in his underpants while he was unconscious. He wondered if he still had possession of his penis.

"Don't be touching down there," the nurse said, winking at him.

"What is it?" Da'Ndre's eyes were round and imploring like a doe's.

"Awwwww," the smoking hot Filipino nurse said, pouting her empathy, stroking his cheeks with her soft knuckles, "didn't they tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

The sexy Asian nurse leaned toward him until her cleavage yawned through a lazy button. Long, smooth strands strayed from her deep brown ponytail, tickling his goosebumps. The amused temptress cupped her palm underneath the thirteen-year-old boy's chin, gazed into the depths of his emerging sexuality and giggled. Then she shrugged her shoulders, tilted her head, and said "You are so _cute!_ "

The natural expansion of Da'Ndre's genitalia was cockblocked by searing pain. Da'Ndre quickly discovered that his tonsils were intact, a fancy white band-aid was around his dick, and in only eight days — when the six heavy duty AAAs in the golden plastic menorah on his bedside table were due to flicker out — he would be officially declared healed. Then, they said, he could remove the bandages.

But meanwhile, since the procedure was classified as outpatient, the adolescent Da'Ndre was forced to leave the hospital immediately, to avoid any more medical fees. He refused the wheelchair, clutched the skimpy hospital gown around himself, and put on a fashion show for all the hot nurses on his way out. His dick was on fire inside sumo wrestling diapers, and his ass was air-chilled through the crack in the back. He was relieved when he finally flopped into the back seat of _"Dad's"_ Jag for the ride home.

Back at the Goldstein's crib, Da'Ndre wandered through the house day and night like a brown ghost, unable to sleep. Two days later, he drowned the cheap Chinese electronic menorah in Esther Goldstein's bidet. The crappy toy kept glowing under the toilet water as if it were possessed by a demon.

On the third day, he said to hell with the doctor's orders and unwound the padding from around his taint. The bandage was like a giant, bloody snake that was coiled around a pussy pad that was in turn wrapped around his dick. The gauze turned out to be as long as a football field. It was so long, he had to take three rest breaks while unwrapping it. It turned increasingly crimson as he worked his way down to the pussy pad. He finally tore the pussy pad off a scab that was reluctant to release, and was shocked by the pitiful sight of his new Jewish collar.

Da'Ndre's turtleneck was gone. In its place was a lump of beet red meat, swollen like a tick on a hound dog, lounging on a brown bean bag like it was drunk.

Da'Ndre threw up.

Three weeks later, the Goldsteins graced their boy with his very own bona fide bar mitzvah. It was a festive ceremony. The secretary down at the synagogue forced three authentic young pale-skinned Hebrew boys to attend the event and befriend the new Jew, on account of the Goldstein's history of generosity to the congregation.

The three Hebrew boys were perfect props for the occasion. They played along, pretending to welcome the awkward, adopted ghetto bro into manhood. Armed with a cleverly weighted dreidel that unlawfully skewed the odds in their favor, the three little Jew boys used sleight of hand to rook the unsuspecting young negro out of seventy-seven of the dollars that had been gifted to him by several generous seniors in attendance.

But the absolute highlight of Da'Ndre's bar mitzvah was the moment when Irving Goldstein surprised his adopted son in front of the entire crowd by producing an African-themed yarmulke from a gold-foiled gift box.

"Now you must cover your head in the presence of the Lord," " _Dad_ " said.

"What? You want me to put this thang on my head?" Da'Ndre said. "You gotta be shittin me."

"It is a reminder that the Lord is always watching you, Da'Ndre."

"You are a paranoid muthafucka," Da'Ndre said. "Ain't nobody watching me except when I go inside a goddamn Seven-Eleven! They got cameras and shit everywhere."

Irving Goldstein produced two hairpins from his shirt pocket and grinned with anticipation.

"Nope," Da'Ndre said. "Ain't happenin." He jerked the ninety-nine dollar handmade Israeli skullcap from Irving's grip like he was snatching a purse at the shopping mall. "You ain't puttin that shit on my nappy head. Not now, not neva." Da'Ndre rolled his fists around opposite sides of the little cap and pulled it apart — ripped it in half — decapitating a pair of golden-embroidered giraffes. Then he threw it down on the Goldstein's oriental rug.

For the next six months, the father and his rebellious adopted son had a Jew feud. Irving Goldstein had the yarmulke repaired by a Korean seamstress at the dry cleaners, and then relentlessly nagged the boy to wear it. Da'Ndre, in turn, purloined Esther's leg razor and shaved his hair down to the scalp so that Irving's sissy hairpins wouldn't have anything to grab onto.

Da'Ndre wasn't going to get his ass whipped at school over a stupid hat.

# # #

On his first day of middle school, the adopted black son of white Jews scanned a churning, shiny sea of Caucasia in the lunch room. He stood there with his avocado green bakelite tray in hand, searching for appropriate companionship. He was alone in the crowd. He had no invitations. He noticed a different table in the far corner, inhabited by all seven of the other local African-American boys.

"Hey, I'm Da'Ndre."

"Sup," the other black boys said in the round, not bothering to make room for another tray at the table.

"Can I sit here with you guys?"

One boy's cheeks bulged with the lumpy mush of public education's surplus cholesterol. He was manspreading to hog the table. "Where you from?"

"Yeah," said another chewing child, also manspreading. "Hey wha's your name?"

"Turnipseed." Da'Ndre said. "Da'Ndre Turnipseed. From Detroit."

"Slave name," said mushmouth. "Aight."

Da'Ndre held up a clenched fist.

"How come you answered roll call to some other name?"

"Adopted."

"By who?"

"By nobody."

"By nobody?" The table stopped chewing, as if Da'Ndre had dropped a hundred dollar bill.

"You ain't no real nigga."

"What the fuck you talkin' about?"

"I know who you is. You black on the outside, but inside you white like a lily."

"Oreo!"

"He Goldstein!"

"You a Jew boy!"

"You a honky!"

"You a whitey cracka muthafucka!"

# # #

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Goldstein?"

"Yes."

"Your, um...'son'..."

"Yes?"

"Your...'son'...has been involved in a little brawl in the school cafeteria," the assistant principal said. "He's been suspended for a week. You need to come pick him up."

# # #

Over the course of the next seventeen painful months, Da'Ndre dedicated himself to the miserable and impossible task of proving the depth of his blackness, his gang-bangness, his nigganess, by engaging in a series of regrettably escalating escapades.

One fateful evening, Da'Ndre whacked, scraped and dragged the orange tip of a pellet gun across parking lot pavement, removing every remnant of evidence that the plastic pistol replica was actually a toy. He peeked around the dumpster until he saw the white hippy in the old bug drive away.

"What kind you want?"

"Kools."

"Newports."

"Get me some O-E-8."

The gas pumps looked like Marines in formation, standing at attention amidst grease blobs and windblown trash. Their national anthem was the soft white buzz of fluorescents in the otherwise silent and lonely time passing between customers.

Da'Ndre's brown eyes appeared aristocratic through the irregular horizontal figure eight in his bright red ski mask, as crimson and serious as freshly spilled blood. He tucked the plastic pistol into his waistband, confident that the clerk — Pakistani or Iranian or whatever he was — wouldn't put up a fuss and demand proof of the toy firearm's authenticity.

"Go! Now!" said his posse.

Da'Ndre felt the electronic accusation of multiple security cameras boring into his skull. He knew those cameras were getting wide shots to establish the scene, medium shots for broadcast television, and close-ups for print publication. But he didn't care. They'd never find out who he was. The news videos and wanted posters would be fantastic for his reputation.

He entered the store. It was a bright, garish, electrified island of nabs, tobacco, beer and wine. A hydrocarbon-infused breeze rushed through the open door from the gas pumps outside, as if the compact glass chamber were vacuum packed, sucking in the rotten gas station air.

The homies were passing a joint behind the dumpster when Da'Ndre sprinted past, carrying a bloodstained carton of Kools. His mind was reeling, corrupted by data overflow from the previous ninety seconds. His overacted masculine demand, the clerk's unexpectedly brazen, high-pitched challenge, the tussle, the foreign curses, the racial slurs exclaimed in broken English. The man's nose had bled on Da'Ndre's gloves, the carton of Kools were streaked crimson, the toy gun and ski mask were both lost. The OE8 was busted open in a sea of foam on the floor. No money had changed hands.

But Da'Ndre had done it. He had stuck a gun in the dude's face, no matter that it was a toy. He had fought a store clerk until they were both bloody. And he had got away with a whole carton of cigarettes.

At that moment, he was unmistakably black. Not a Jew. Not a Oreo. Not a honkey cracka whitey muthafucka. Black, goddammit. He was blacker than his homies, black as a NIGGA with a big-ass fuckin attitude straight outa Compton or Harlem or Anacostia or Eight Mile or any MLK Boulevard anywhere in the whole goddamn country. And he couldn't wait until the next day to be crowned with legendary superpredator negro status at the brothas' lunch table in the Neal Armstrong Middle School cafeteria.

# # #

The video helped to refresh Da'Ndre's meager recollection. It had surprising resolution for a surveillance system. It was a flawless visual narration of the entire event, completely filling in the gaps and fuzzy spots of his confused memory.

The security camera displayed the unmistakable genetic signature of his wiry Senegambian provenance, topped off with a Woody Woodpecker head. The wide shots, the medium shots and the close-ups of the skinny brown adolescent stick figure were suspenseful. Da'Ndre felt like he was rooting for some other nigga who was doing something g-shit and thinking he'd get away with it.

What Da'Ndre couldn't see in that video was how the punk he was watching had been born of a proud ancient lineage, because he never knew that. He couldn't see a culture that had been erased from his own ancestral history. He couldn't fathom the effects of two dozen consecutive generations of broken spirits, smashed families and beaten bodies. He couldn't understand his own ethnic culture because his own history was considered so insignificant by white society that the public schools could not afford the dignity of giving it a perfunctory glossing over. There were only two paragraphs about black Africans in his eighth-grade World History textbook. He didn't even know that the black teachers and black principals in all the schools he had attended — who should have been his historians — were themselves victims of a racist system that kept them ignorant of their own origins.

The old Jewish lady, Esther Goldstein, was lucky, but she was too stupid to know how lucky she was. She knew her own heritage. She had an ethnic identity that was forged by God Almighty, all the way back in the Bible to Adam and Eve. She would hug Da'Ndre tight around his ears with her scrawny old arm, playfully, and give him a knuckles-on-noggin noogie. And while she was rubbing his head, she'd say " _We're all the same people, Da'Ndre. We're all one race. The human race."_ She said it like she wanted to trick him into believing it.

Da'Ndre enjoyed those noogies. They felt oddly affectionate, burrowing into his shaved head, even though they were from a rich white lady who didn't know nothin about being no minority and had never suffered a single day in her whole life. He didn't believe none of that kind of bullshit she was preaching. He knew it wasn't true. People are mean. People are all just evil violent assholes, barely able to sustain peace between themselves. He knew all this despite what Esther Goldstein said. He didn't need to be a goddamn dirty Arab to understand the obvious truth.

Da'Ndre knew sure as shit what was up, from the day he whipped those two Jewish boys' asses and made them return that hundred and thirty-two bucks that they had stole from him with that rigged spinning top. Da'Ndre didn't know how to calculate the exact interest and penalties they owed him, but he knew from Saturday morning chitchat around the synagogue that they owed it, so he settled for all the money they had in their pockets at the time, plus the savings from both their piggy banks that he made one of them retrieve before releasing the other from a tracheal death lock.

After that incident — word of which swirled through the local Hebrew community like a Yahwehan curse — Da'Ndre's adoptive parents treated him with far more respect. They gave him incredible latitude to sneak out his window and run all over town late at night like he was an alley cat in heat. They lost interest in reviewing his report card. They relaxed their insistence that he attend Saturday services.

As curly down appeared around the base of his penis, he noticed that white women would clutch their purses to their bosoms whenever he stepped into an elevator. As his balls became furry, white families kachunked their electric car door locks shut every time he jaywalked. When a single hair sprouted on his chin, full grown white men crossed the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk.

What else did he need to know? Of course he knew the basics of slavery, mainly that it existed, his own race was negatively affected, and it was whitey that did it. But what he failed to realize was that he was young, ignorant and apathetic. He never really paid attention to the details about democratic disenfranchisement, economic redlining, unemployment, undue imprisonment, Jim Crow oppression and segregation, mob lynchings, chained oceanic passages, the raping of brown girls, the jail cells of Gorée, and the grieving of a family sold piecemeal on the auction block to different owners from faraway places. All that was a long time ago. All that was lost. All that was just a historical poltergeist.

What Da'Ndre _did_ know was that he had an unpredictable tar baby of emotion that, from time to time, welled up inside his chest without warning or explanation. It was a fury that was mixed into his biracial DNA at conception, a fury that was permanently duct-taped onto the back side of his African-redneck soul like a fragile glass bottle of whup-ass with a skull-and-crossbones label, ready to explode in reaction to the most minimal of slights.

The video revealed that Da'Ndre's immature arms were no match for the clerk's — a fully grown man now identified as Korean — who was surprisingly eager to fight to the death over a concept as insignificant as his own family's economic survival. Da'Ndre was glad none of his homies would ever see how he was manhandled and mistreated by the slanty-eyed foreigner, as duly played for the court on the prosecutor's DVD. He was lucky to have knocked over the chrome corn chip rack that bloodied the clerk's nose, or else he wouldn't have made it out of the store with anything at all.

The Goldsteins, who for the past seventeen months had been pestered by Da'Ndre's hijinks (vandalism, graffiti, pork consumption, cable porn purchases, and petty theft of their carefully hidden marijuana) seized the opportunity presented by the prosecutor's multi-year confinement deal, as relayed to them by Judge Weinstein. Esther Goldstein tearfully waved goodbye as the bailiff led Da'Ndre away. Irving exited the courtroom without looking back at anything or anybody.

While Da'Ndre was held in the Armstrong County Juvenile Detention Center, the only human contact he had with the outside world was once a month, when a mysterious man, a nebbish Jew dentist, visited to install and adjust the orthodontia that straightened his crooked teeth into a perfect smile.

Da'Ndre figured Irving and Esther Goldstein must have paid for that.

But they never wrote, never called, never visited.

Apparently, their Skinner Box had been a failure.

# # #

Da'Ndre knocked on the suburban door and a stranger answered.

"Uh," he said. "Are the Goldsteins still living here? Irving and Esther Goldstein?"

The square-jawed fellow, who might well have been a desk pilot for the local sewer authority, scanned the image of the Day Zero adult standing on his front porch. The kid had on a midriff-exposing ghetto shirt, and even though the tops of his britches were barely above the penis-line, they were flood pants at the bottom. "I don't know where they moved," the man said, before gracing Da'Ndre with an irritable Methodist smile, a mellow squeeze of the door into its jamb, and a rapid series of snaps, klonks, snips and zips presumably associated with resetting an array of anxious locks, deadbolts, and chain sliders into their secured positions.

Da'Ndre turned around on the porch of his former Jewish home and scanned the panorama of the neighborhood he had once inhabited as a stranger. It was sunset on his first day of adulthood. As the dew fell and the sky darkened, Da'Ndre saw the light. Literally, he saw a glow on the horizon. And so he followed it like a Biblical wise man.

He stumbled down suburban streets, dark alleys and urban shortcuts. He snuck through yards and jumped fences. He followed that light to the outskirts of town, until he stood in the focal center of Marblee Amusement's motley assortment of hydraulic machines, a random collection of greasy, ill-maintained, portable amusement rides that were flinging white teenagers around in circles.

Banks of pounding woofers and teen screams overwhelmed the racket of repetitive gaseous emissions as the machines spun their cargo. White kids paying good money to be tickled by gravity-defeating parabolas. Freedom made of oily steel, loose bucks, and white people, lots and lots of goddamn white people.

He stumbled upon the owner of the place, whose fists were balled at his side. He was squared off against one of his employees, but nobody had thrown a punch yet. Da'Ndre knew it was the owner because it was an old white dude with pockmarked cheeks and a bald head who didn't look like he was at the fair to have fun. The owner was no physical match for the angry dreadlocked nigga with a neckful of bling and rings on every finger, who also had his fists balled up, ready to swing. They were arguing beside an idle pneumatic octopus called the Rumbly Wumbly. The zipper on the old white man's bermuda shorts was rupturing while his face got redder and redder. MILFs were abandoning the snaking line and leaving for the parking lot with their sniveling toddlers. Money was being lost.

Da'Ndre — acting as if he didn't realize there was a confrontation in progress — approached the pair and addressed the white man. "You hirin anyone, sir?" he asked.

"This ain't none of your goddamn business, muthafucka," the dreadlocked nigga said.

"I ain't talkin to you," Da'Ndre said, maintaining eye contact with the white man.

Mr Marblee wrinkled his forehead and visually scanned Da'Ndre, from the boy's worn-out sneakers to his nappy head. He saw a kid bulging out of undersized clothes, a needy kid who was ripe for the carnival lifestyle. "Yeah, I'm hirin," the boss man said, and pointed toward the Rumbly Wumbly. "You think you can operate that machine?"

"Hell yeah I can run it," Da'Ndre said, before throwing a sidelong glance at the big ugly monstrosity sitting there idle, dripping grease underneath a crisscross of bright bulbs.

Sensing competition for his job, the dreadlocked nigga cocked his elbow and punched Da'Ndre directly in the mouth, knocking Da'Ndre's left incisor so far back into his throat that he had no choice but to swallow it.

Da'Ndre didn't fall, though. He staggered backwards a few steps, shook the cobwebs, and proceeded to whip that dreadlocked nigga's ass, past the point where the pussy was bloody from head to toe, past the point when he was begging for mercy, past the ticket booths and fences, and all the way out of the carnival parking lot, until everyone knew that that faux-rasta muthafucka would never return. Ever.

Mr Marblee took Da'Ndre to an emergency dental clinic and bought him a shiny gold tooth. The next day, he made Da'Ndre HNIC of the Rumbly Wumbly Ride for Toddlers. He gave Da'Ndre dominion over a microphone that was hooked up to a fifty-watt loudspeaker, and told Da'Ndre to use it to boss people around, maintain order and ensure the safety of children.

Da'Ndre was a natural at that job. He would buckle the kids into their seats, make sexy eyes to their mommas, and turn the machine on. As the kids were being swung around in circles, he'd pick up his microphone and sing along with the soul classics that got mixed into the Marblee Amusement rotation. He performed his irresistible karaoke to the ladies while the Rumbly Wumbly kept their children occupied for exactly three minutes and forty-five seconds.

To some of the ladies, his voice was irresistible.

CHAPTER TWELVE

### MONDAY MORNING

The longest minutes in the universe are the last three just before the cell door opens after seventeen bullshit years locked in a goddamn cage.

The warden stood there in his tailored suit, flanked by a pair of uniformed white male Georgia State Troopers who had come in from the outside. One of the cops tossed a black plastic bag onto the floor. It was emblazoned with Andre's inmate number.

"There are your belongings, Mr Turnipseed," the warden said. "The orange suit you're wearing is property of the State of Georgia. So if you don't mind, sir, could you please get into your street clothes before you leave?"

Andre's cellie sat up in the bottom bunk. He was panicked. "You're _leaving?_ " he asked. "You're _getting out?_ "

Andre hopped down from the top bunk, picked up the bag and stared into his cellie's eyes. Cellie was a pudgy nerd, a computer hacker serving seven years for breaking into NSA computers and stealing copies of all their child porn. Most inmates would have murdered the punk on the first night, if not for being a child pornographer, definitely for the growl of his sleep apnea. That's why they assigned him to Andre. They knew Andre was a short timer and didn't want no trouble. "Yep," Andre said. "I'm gettin the fuck outa here."

"Why didn't you tell me, man?"

"Son, you don't never tell _no one_ when you're gettin out," Andre said. "Not if you ever wanna make it out." Andre tore into the plastic bag. He pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. He was greeted by his expired driver's license, with a photo of his younger self: a jive muthafucka grinning through the plastic window, completely unaware of the fucked-up path his life would take. There was no cash inside. Only a dead Diners Club card.

He dipped his hand into the black plastic bag again and extracted a hospital gown — spattered with black blood — and a pair of dirty non-slip cotton footies. He displayed the gown to the warden. It looked like a baby blue negligee that was found at a child's murder scene. "What the fuck is _this_?"

"You get back what you came in with, Mr Turnipseed," the warden said. "Would you like to say goodbye to any of your friends or just walk straight out?"

Andre hustled to change into the hospital gown so he could get the fuck out of Aberdeen. He wanted to say goodbye to his posse, but he knew they would understand if he didn't. There was no way he was going to walk through the whole prison in that hospital gown. He might have some business to tend to down in Shannon County, he didn't know, and he wasn't exactly sure if that business would cause him to ever be coming back to this place or not. If it did, he wouldn't want his reputation to be tainted by prancing around like Tinkerbell on his way out.

Even though he wasn't taking a grand tour, Andre knew he had to pass one hundred and seventeen cells from his own crib in a direct line to the outside world. He held the hospital gown closed over his ass as the warden and the two state troopers escorted him to the exit. Along the way, the inmates reached at him through the bars while heckling him with wolf whistles, catcalls and profanity. He knew every single one of the two thousand three hundred and forty-eight inmates by their Christian names, and he responded to each one of their taunts with a curled-lip _fuck you,_ or _muthafucka,_ or _sombitch,_ even though in his heart, he wanted to hug every last one of them goodbye, even the ones that was fucked up in the head. But he could never let that show.

At the last cell before the exit, Andre's eyes met those of Ernie the Lifer. The grizzled old colored dude sat on his bunk. He didn't harass Andre at all. He looked peaceful, like he had accumulated more wisdom and serenity than Buddha. "Let it out, bro," Ernie said. "It's okay. You ain't comin back here. You ain't got no worries. Let it out, bro."

But Andre didn't let nothin out. Hell no. Not much of it anyway. He broke eye contact with Ernie, gripped his emotions tight, and figured there was only a 50/50 chance Ernie ever saw a drop.

# # #

The goddamn farmer should have seen their dusty rooster tail long before he drove that tractor across the road in front of them. One second he and Dixie and the little pickaninny was setting up the crooked cops, and the next second, things took an unexpected turn. Or more accurately, they took a sudden stop.

They were doing ninety or a hundred. Maybe more. The woman he loved was screaming for him to stop, or get away, either one, she couldn't make up her mind. His plan had admittedly become a little murky. The kid looked like he was scared to shit.

There was so much information overload, it was impossible to figure it all out in such a short amount of time, and at such a high speed. He thought he had it all figured out in advance; there were only a few minor unknowns that he intended to freeball.

But maybe he hadn't thought about it enough beforehand. The unknowns suddenly expanded into true problems, such as: could he be completely sure that he and his woman and his kid would be far enough away when the thing went kaboom? And if so, would they simply be able to stroll away after a fatal explosion, like heroes in an action movie? And why the fuck hadn't he thought of this shit before he rigged the trunk to blow up in the first place? It had seemed like a decent plan until that moment.

He had been really pissed off when he had rigged up the bomb. His judgment had been clouded by rage against whitey. But as he was racing against the cops, he realized he had become clear-headed and calm. He kept the throttle pinned to the floor. The speedometer needle was bouncing between 93 and 117.

So Andre repented, right then and there. It only took a split second to do it. It was like something clicked in his head. He didn't even have to say nothing out loud. All he had to do was think it. _Lord, if you get me out of this, I swear I will follow all ten of your commandments for the rest of my goddamn life._ And the instant that simple thought flew through his mind, he was uplifted by the Holy Spirit, or something, and he knew in his heart that he was saved. Spiritually saved, that is. In real life, the cops were still right on his ass.

The darkening silence was punctuated by human cries and whimpers and the erratic clatter of miscellaneous debris falling from the sky as if it were precipitation from an aerial junkyard.

Andre had tasted glass many times before, but never without the protection of a cabin full of rubber tires.

# # #

Earl Finkter had started all this when he fanned ten one-hundred-dollar bills on his desktop like he was a Las Vegas blackjack dealer.

"That don't even pay our back rent," Andre had told him.

"Take it or leave it, Turnipseed."

"We're partners," Andre said. "So we each get a third apiece. Me, her and you."

Finkter leaned back in his lawyer's chair, put his hands behind his head in well financed repose, and fastened both his eyes on Andre. "You take _what_ I give you, _when_ I give it to you."

"Judge awarded ninety fucking thousand," Andre said. He wheeled his chair to Finkter's desk and wiped everything off it – ashtray, court pleadings, the ten Franklins. "A thousand bucks is bullshit for all the work we done."

"I got expenses," Finkter said.

"I spent the last eighteen months in your goddamn wheelchair," Andre said.

"I been in this goddamn wheelchair for two fucking years already!" A tear rolled down Dixie's cheek. "I'm gainin weight!"

Finkter leveled his gaze at Dixie. "You shut up," he said.

"Don't you talk to my woman like that," Andre said, standing up from his wheelchair. "Dixie and me, we got a kid, we got rent, we got expenses, too."

"Sit back down in that chair before you fuck things up," Finkter commanded. "We got three more cases working. They got zoom lenses and all kinds of shit to spy on us nowadays."

"You think I give a shit no more?" Andre asked.

"Our car got repossessed," Dixie said. "Our car with all the hand controls."

Andre pounded Finkter's desk with his fist. "You split the take three ways with Dixie and me." He leaned over to stare directly into the old white man's pair of yellow-tinged eyes. "Or I'm goin down to the FBI to turn you in and pick up a reward for your sorry ass."

"Are you trying to blackmail me? Your very own attorney?"

"You ain't no real lawyer, I done checked on that."

"You done checked on that, have ya?" Finkter put his feet on his desk, one at a time, and crossed his ankles. "You know what I call that?" His courtroom blazer fell open to reveal a fabulous shoulder holster. It was a custom designed black leather sling, fully loaded with a gold-plated .357 Ruger Rattlesnake, a fearsome classic revolver with a reputation for temporarily imposing the will of its white owners on black people. "I call that an uppity nigger," Finkter said.

"We want our goddamn money, Finkter."

"Andre, listen buddy, I want to be your friend, alright? Maybe we both just need a little time off from all the pressure." Finkter leaned forward, opened his desk drawer, and peered over his reading spectacles at Andre. He felt around in the drawer, then trapped something in the palm of his hand. He tossed Andre a set of car keys. "How bout a week down Florida for the three of y'all, on me?"

# # #

Finkter's office was a single-story no-frills brick pillbox from the 1950s, a contractor-grade standalone. It sported a pink slab door for a mouth, and a pair of dark horizontal squints for its front windows. It had wide hips that hogged half the graveled urban parcel. It was a disgraceful business in a neighborhood that was proud of its strip clubs, payday loan sharks, and whorehouses.

Finkter had upgraded the ugly building's facade with a bare naked concrete ADA ramp. It was off-white, pocked with oily stains, and stuck out into the dusty parking lot from the front door like a flu-coated tongue.

Finkter led the way down the ramp and through the graveled lot. Andre and Dixie rolled down the ramp behind him and struggled to keep up, hand-wheeling their chairs over gravel. They made their way through the side parking lot and around to the rear of the building.

The Galaxie was unique to say the least. A hurricane of primary colors had been slathered, dripped and drizzled over its entire body.

"She's a beaut, ain't she?" Finkter said with a smile. "She's registered in your name," he said, rapping his knuckles on the Galaxie's hood. "I got her rigged up with hand controls and everything." He opened the creaky driver's door, extracted a manila from the front seat, and laid paperwork across the hood. "Here's seven wonderful nights at the beautiful Shangri-Louise Motel. It's only three blocks off the beach. One double room with a rollaway for your daughter."

"Son."

"Here's a TripTik from Triple A," Finkter said, laying the modern flipbook map open on the hood. "Take this route," he said, pointing to the highlighted roads. "Here's an extra hundred apiece for walkin around money."

"Son," Andre said, craning his neck from his wheelchair to see the little map book.

"What?"

"We got a son, not a daughter," Andre said.

"Oh. Right. Son. Whatever. Your kid."

"You forget we can't walk around," Dixie said from her chair, "least not in public."

"Once you get south of Mason-Dixon, long as you're sure nobody's tailing ya, go ahead and ditch the chairs for the whole week," Finkter said. "But you gotta be back up here looking crippled on the seventeenth for a hearing. And I tell you what," he winked, "you do a good job in court and I'll give you an extra bonus this time."

"How much?" Andre squinted in the sunlight.

"Depends on how much we get."

Andre was suspicious as he drove Dixie home in the old hand-control Galaxie. Something was wrong. Earl Finkter was never this generous. A nag grew like a cold sore in the back of his mind.

At some ungodly hour in the middle of the night, Andre snapped awake with a prophetic illusion. He realized that Finkter had hidden something inside the car. _Contraband._ That TripTik map he gave them was a route directly into some sort of a trap.

He extracted his sleeping arm from underneath Dixie's pillow, and – wearing only his threadbare boxers and wifebeater – walked right past his wheelchair and out to the multicolored Galaxie at the curb.

He didn't give a shit if any private eye caught him on camera. It was 1:56 a.m. in the morning. If they caught him, then they deserved their bonus for it.

He rifled through the glove box and felt all around under the seats. Nothing.

He popped the trunk lid. The cavernous trunk was replete with detritus. He yanked the spare tire and tossed it on the pavement behind the car. There was nothing underneath it except a tire iron and jack, the two of them laying akimbo as if discovered _in flagrante delicto_. He explored underneath corroded tools, empty beer cans and Wild Irish Rose bottles. He poked through long-chewed chicken bones, greasy jumper cables and crumpled McDonald's bags. Nada.

He popped the hood, leaned over the engine compartment, and shined his dimming Eveready inside. He checked behind every belt, around every hose, into every dark crevice. Still nothing. He was beginning to believe his hunch was mistaken.

With a flat-blade screwdriver, corroded channellocks and a dull jackknife, he began disassembling the car: air filter, kick panels, seat cushions, headliner. No joy.

At 3:17 a.m. in the morning, he inspected the grille, pried the plastic side panels off the interior of the doors, and shimmied the length of the undercarriage on his back.

He decided his suspicions were unfounded. He was wrong. There was no contraband.

He went inside and retrieved James Bong. He returned to the street, sat on the Galaxie's jutting rear bumper, and lit up to strategize. After three tokes within a minute and a half of heavy thought, he came to realize he was staring at the spare tire, lying on the pavement behind the car where he had thrown it. It was old and dry rotted. Its tread had been whored away by a million miles of blacktop. He poked it with a toe. It was fully inflated.

He circled the car and leaned on each of the four tires with the heel of his bare left foot. They were all in various states of underinflation.

Why would the old spare be tight with air while the other tires were neglected?

He unscrewed the spare's valve cap, spritzed some compressed air from it, whiffed the results. The musk of styrene was infused with a trace pheromone: the telltale odor of sticky _sensimilla._

Andre flipped his jackknife open. He stabbed the spare's rotten sidewall. It hissed an acrid eruption of solvent-infused industrial air laced with the sweet perfume of locoweed. He jabbed and ripped through steel belts until the tire had a grin that looked like a jack-o-lantern.

It was a caesarean birth. Andre found three bulging, gallon-size ziplocs huddling in the guts of the spare tire, like they were illegal Mexican immigrant workers. He carefully guided the triplets through the maze of jagged, razor-sharp wire and ragged rubber with the skill of an African midwife. The babies were all female. The bags were loaded with beautiful buds of sun-streaked chronic.

There was a total of one pound and one ounce of weed – sixteen ounces individually wrapped in sandwich baggies for distribution – plus another five years in a seventeenth bag.

This was back in the day when niggas went to prison for that kinda shit.

That white demon was indeed trying to set his black ass up.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

### GLORY

Utterly helpless to resist the preordained pilgrimage, Earl Finkter pointed his Beemer toward the dark but dependable glory he knew all too well. He knew in his heart he was hetero. Knew it all his life. Didn't matter that he had never married during his handsome years. He dated women here and there, still did sometimes, found them attractive even, screwed them when they cooperated, or succumbed to statutory coercion, pecuniary self-interest, or clandestine pharmaceuticals.

All that stuff that had happened with Red Dingledine when they were kids was an aberration. It wasn't really him. They were just practicing. He had been almost one hundred percent mechanically functional as a heterosexual for over three decades of his life, even though it was admittedly a non-contiguous record.

With a handsome woman, Earl Finkter could manage to conjure a decent enough _petite mort_ to keep the evil urges in check. But in times of stress, or moral weakness, or setting up an uppity nigger for a stint in the Georgia State Penitentiary, a conventional orgasm often proved insufficient to calm his jitters, and the demons howled for grander _morts._

He parked in the dim gray public lot that was abandoned and off-limits after hours. With a London Fog buttoned around his bare soul, he pulled his fedora to his eyebrows, stepped out of his car, and slunk through a gap in the bushes, sneaking down a thin muddy track braided through the underbrush. If anyone had been watching, his hairy shins would have been visible between the hem of his stormcloud-tinted raincoat and his sockless charcoal wingtips.

As he chopped his way through the weeds, he felt naked without his Ruger Rattlesnake. When he had originally purchased it, it was standard blue steel. But when the gun dealer told him the tale of how this particular piece had patriotically liberated south Georgia from the foreign influence of three yankee negro rabble-rousers in 1963, Finkter had it electroplated with 23-carat gold by a Jewish jeweler who charged him for all 24. It had a six-inch barrel so big around, Finkter was afraid to look down it. Its rifling was grooved so deep, it spun bullets like an Acapulcan cliff diver. Accurate and powerful, it was a handheld cannon with a boom that would bust an elephant's eardrums at a hundred yards.

He couldn't figure out how it had disappeared earlier in the day, like it had just jumped out of his shoulder holster and strolled away of its own accord. He had looked everywhere for it, turning his office and Beemer upside-down without success. So all he had to carry, on this particular evening, was his reliable little derringer. It was a double-barreled peashooter fully loaded with a pair of .22 shorts, like raccoon eyes peering through tiny binoculars. While it didn't pack near the punch of his .357, it would certainly create enough inconvenience to convince the average attacker to back the fuck off long enough for Finkter to make an escape.

He skirted the park as always, a concentric circle, checking for plainclothes, ne'er-do-wells, drug addicts, thieves. He tracked a concentric spiral to the bullseye inside the park's public toilet.

As he darkened the door, his presence was acknowledged by a shuffle in the rear stall, an anxious rustling of naked meat on metal, an anonymous zoological specimen pacing in its cage. The crisp night air was humid and pungent, tainted by the odor of bodily secretions, Cherry Lysol and urinal cake. Finkter entered the stall adjacent to the penned animal. The beige steel divider was corroded by decades of splashed urine and bankrupt municipal budgets. He locked the door and slipped two twenties through the black hole at the center of his universe.

Bearded lips plugged the hole from the opposite side, offering Finkter a series of moist air smooches. Finkter unbuttoned his London Fog, felt the chill on his naked belly, and liberated his member, stiffened not only with anticipation, but with a pair of blue pills he chased down with a trio of Svedka shot bottles on the drive out.

The hairy masculine lips kissed their invitation. The animal's tongue wiggled like a night crawler.

Finkter slid his member into heaven. But at that very instant – like a reflex when touching a hot stove – he found himself blocking blows with his forearms, before he even realized his stall door had burst open from a violent kick.

A silent intruder — his face obscured by a ski mask, his hands clad in leather work gloves - pummeled Finkter relentlessly with a tire iron. Finkter's leather-soled wingtips offered no purchase on the slippery concrete floor. He was down and scrambling, without a chance of regaining his footing. His head banged against the toilet, once, twice, thrice.

The animal caged in the rear stall cowered, his lips now loudly pleading, innocently wailing for universal peace on earth, throughout all of humanity.

Finkter sputtered worthless barters, pleas, and promises. He couldn't be the victim of a bashing – he wasn't a faggot. This wasn't homosexuality, this was just a hole in a wall! It was just glorified wacking off!

He kicked and flailed, failing to forestall the ruthless attack. His ear was smashed to the porcelain by the attacker's knee. An unstoppable force of anger vice-gripped his cranium like an assembly line robot manhandling an entire Buick for its next screw.

And then there was a shiny glint, a serrated grapefruit-scooping spoon, followed by the stinging of his socket and the embarrassed blush of the sewage water. The sensitive organ still remained – by the momentary neglect of the relentless attacker – for the first time in its life face to face, staring at its twin, bobbing in the rose colored toilet water, as Finkter's own bile erupted into the white commode.

And then it was flushed like excrement as the attacker jacked the handle with the toe of his white sneaker. Finkter thought it was a familiar white sneaker, but there were millions of them on millions of anonymous feet.

Finkter watched his disembodied eyeball swirl away forever, and then there was the trail of blood, the flashbulb and popcorn-popping of his two worthless derringer shots as the attacker fled, the unsuccessful cupping of hands to catch the unstoppable gush, the erratic racing to the hospital, the blood-ruined leather interior of his Beemer, and the questioning, the endless fucking police questioning, probing, invasion of his privacy, like a wrecking bar wrenching the gut out of a cheap split-level, endlessly prying at his secret, his darkness, his disgrace. And the fucking eternal hard-on from the double dose of Viagra, the goddamn boner nagging til sunrise, and that first look in the hospital mirror, with the white and red patch over his empty eye socket, like a whore's flag of shame.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

### THE SETUP

Mothafucka set up a nigga for possession with intent to distribute. Deserved to _die_ , not just lose his eyeball. Andre hiked through the park back to the Galaxie. He threw the tire iron, gloves and ski mask into the floorboard and drove home to his classic mustard couch, where he sat down with James Bong to begin a forensic analysis on his newfound aromatic weed.

"Dixie!"

"I'm sleeping, asshole."

"Where's Finkter from?"

"Georgia somewhere."

"Where in Georgia?"

"How in the fuck should I know?"

"Don't he brag about knowing some cop down there?"

"I'm asleep."

Andre shotgunned another hit and idly paged through the TripTik until he got to Georgia. It had to be somewhere down in Georgia. Some white muthafuckin cop waitin to bust a nigga with intent to distribute over a pound of weed.

He fished the bloody serrated spoon out of his pocket and realized he had the munchies for grapefruit.

One down, one to go.

# # #

When the crazy car stopped on Eight Mile, it took Raunchy a few seconds before he recognized Andre. "Hey man, nice ride." Raunchy was named for his breath, a tepid jet stream of Poached Salmon Provencal that he chain swallowed out of Fancy Feast flip-tops. "It's good shit, you oughta try it." He always leaned in the passenger window and scoped the car as if he were a kid looking for Easter eggs. Andre had his chrome wheelchair folded up in the back seat and was driving with hand controls, like usual. "How much you want?"

"I got something for _you_ this time," Andre said. He turned a brown paper grocery bag upside-down, dumping sixteen baggies on the passenger seat.

"Whoa!" Raunchy picked one of the baggies up; his face lit up with appreciation when he ran it under his nose. "How much you askin for these?"

"Don't want no money, Raunchy."

"You ain't givin' this shit away."

"I want a dozen sticks of dynamite and a detonator."

# # #

Andre awoke with a jackhammer inside his head. It was dark outside the window. Barney was scolding Opie on a curved black-and-white CRT that was hanging from a pastel wall on a sagging robot arm. He discovered his entire body was wrapped like a mummy. The crooks of his elbows were punctured by needles of saline, antibiotics and morphine. His urine was flowing out of a clear vinyl tube from his crotch. His left wrist was chained to the bed like he was a common criminal.

He looked around the hospital room and spotted a gray complexioned county cop, an old white dude, snoring and drooling his way to retirement in a chair right beside the hospital bed. The cop's nametag said THURMAN. Half a dozen Donut Hole donuts were gone from a 13-pack. Barney's dialog came out of a tinny speaker on the end of a pigtail draped across the sleeping cop's crotch.

Then he spotted freedom on a key ring, dangling in plain sight on the cop's double-wide belt.

Andre figured something stupid must happen to cops when they get that close to their pension. It's either an addlement of the brain, a laziness due to advancing age, or a compulsion for one last exciting fistfight.

In any case, Andre knew the Lord was answering his prayer. He mentally reviewed what he could recall of the Ten Commandments to determine if an escape attempt would be in violation of his sacred pledge to God. It wouldn't be lying or stealing, check. It wouldn't be killing or fucking around with anyone else's woman, slaves or livestock, check. He could probably refrain from uttering the Lord's name in vain. Check.

So Andre jumped up out of the hospital bed like a mummy arising from the dead. He dragged all his tubes and even the bed itself along for the ride, and — with his shackled arm — got the cop into a death lock diagonal across the windpipe, face down in the bedsheets. The cop's pistol leaped into Andre's free hand and was abusing the flatfoot's temple before the old dude even shook the dreams out of his brain.

"Key," the black-skinned mummy said to the cop. "Unlock the fuckin handcuffs."

"I...I don't have a key," the cop squeaked though his squashed trachea. The liar was wide-eyed, flush-faced, shitting his pants.

The door opened and a sexy Asian nurse entered the room. Her eyes were averted downward, preoccupied with reading doctor's notes on a clipboard. When she looked up and saw Andre and the cop — frozen in mid-struggle — her clipboard hit the floor.

"Excuse me? Nurse?" Andre said, still holding the cop in a headlock. "Do you happen to know if my car exploded?"

The Vietnamese hottie was so stunned she didn't do anything but stand there and breathe hard. She reminded Andre of an actress in a VHS porno he had hidden from Dixie back at the apartment.

"Did my family survive? Are they alright?"

And then the young nurse scurried away, screaming Vietnamese gibberish.

Andre resumed the struggle. He planted his knee between the cop's shoulder blades, and tore the key off the cop's wide blue belt.

Andre's skull was pounding. His hands were shaking. But somehow, he managed to unlock the cuffs and liberate himself. He threw the key into a far, dark corner and slapped the open cuff shut around the cop's wrist, locking the old dude to the hospital bed.

An emergency alarm sounded throughout the entire hospital. Strobes flashed. Andre snatched his little bag of morphine from the drip stand and hobbled out of the room into the hallway. He picked a direction at random and limped at top speed. He could hear the old cop screaming for help. His penis dragged the cloudy catheter bag like it was an orange alley cat on a leash. Bandages dripped from his extremities. Andre the fugitive mummy was hoping for the slim chance of finding an exit, any exit, any stairwell, fire escape or laundry chute that would present a getaway route.

He had a common-law wife. He had a kid. He had a life.

Five years for manhandling the sleeping cop in the hospital. Three more for attempted escape. Four more for hitting the goddamn farmer, even though it was the farmer's fault for failure to yield right-of-way. The rest was for reckless driving, driving under the influence, eluding police, and being a yankee nigger in the backwoods of racist fucking Georgia.

If Finkter ever knew who plunged his eyeball out at the glory hole, he never told anyone.

# # #

And then it was all over, and he had paid his debt to society, and in exchange, society owed him a hundred goddamn bucks.

Andre was led into the Release Room: an air lock between the prison block and the outside world. There was a bulletproof window in the room like a drive-thru bank teller's. A jaundiced woman was behind the glass, studying Drudge Report on a state computer while sucking on a vape pen that resembled a robot's cock.

The warden knocked, interrupting the woman's reverie.

"Yessir?" the bureaucrat said through a tinny speaker while exhaling formaldehyde.

"Andre Turnipseed," the warden said.

The bureaucrat made a show of inputting data into an archaic government mainframe — the antique database that kept humans in cages — and then shoved a crisp $100 bill out through the sliding drawer. It had a hologram like it was from the future. There was a receipt beside it.

The warden laid a gold Mont Blanc beside the receipt. "Sign right here," he said.

Andre snatched the money up and signed his name.

"Put your inmate number beside your signature."

"That's _your_ number, muthafucka," Andre said, staring directly into the warden's eyeballs. "It ain't mine no more. So _you_ write it down if you want it." He slapped the warden's pen down.

The two state troopers stepped closer to intimidate Andre. The warden held up his hand to stop them.

Andre knew what the warden's glare meant. It meant the warden would happily put Andre's black ass back behind bars for another seventeen years, if only he had the authority.

"Is anyone here to pick me up?" Andre asked.

The warden nodded to the bitch behind the glass, who pushed a button. A door lock emitted a buzz at the far end of the room. It sounded just like the electric chair. "There's the door," the warden said. "Why don't you go on outside and find out for yourself?"

One of the state troopers shoved the steel door open. A humid yawn of spring air blew under Andre's gown, tickling the hair on his balls.

The State of Georgia was finally daring the blackest man on earth to return to the free world and stay there. But Andre Turnipseed didn't know how to leave.

"You get the fuck outa here right now, Turnipseed," the warden said through a forced grin. Andre thought the man's face looked whiter when compared to his yellow teeth. "I'm sure we'll see you again in a month or two."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

### PROBABLY SOME RANDOM THURSDAY

Earl Finkter, who called himself Esquire, resisted reminiscing about the glorious, God-given sense of parallax that had been robbed from him. It had been seventeen filthy years since the nigger gouged out his eyeball, and he had long ago convinced himself that he had gotten over it, emotionally recovered, and moved on.

He tongue-bathed his glass eye inside his mouth, swished it like mouthwash, spat it into his palm. He held it up to the sunbeam streaming through his musty office window, examining it for shit stains. Even though it had been three years and a fifty-five-gallon drum of Clorox since he'd dropped his ersatz eye into the pissoir at Sinatra's Steak House, keeping it sparkling was still his number one highest priority obsession. He couldn't bring himself to go through the ticklish and humiliating process of ordering a replacement, even though he had at least ten thousand times the necessary cash hidden away in his conference room's wall safe.

It was the same economic model as his Ruger. He couldn't bring himself to buy another Rattlesnake simply because he had temporarily misplaced the one he had seventeen years earlier. That pistol _had_ to be around somewhere. It would pop up one day. In the mean time, he would rely on the subtle persuasion of his derringer, and the overwhelming elegance of his diplomacy. Besides, if he bought another pistol, some computer at the federal government might start poking around one of his identities. He didn't need that.

He peeked through the blinds, scoping the street outside his office. He saw a suburban-style, neo-negro soccer mom, absently flossing her glossy white pearls. She was casually leaning against an aged, severely sunburned Voyager that was parallel parked along the curb.

Across the street, the sexy dog trainer bitch — Emily Rutkowski was her name — was teasing a dozen K-9 recruits. She had a mix of dogs, from Beagles to German Shepherds, who were now sitting formally in a row, an army of drug-sniffing mutts. One by one, the sexpot waved a baggie of evidence-locker marijuana in front of their noses, and then she gave them treats.

Finkter wondered how anyone could stoop so low as to spend their entire adult lives with dogs, every fucking day for eons. Barking, slobbering, pissing, shitting, stink-ass dogs.

Finkter often fantasized what it would be like to fuck that dog trainer bitch. He figured she was a lesbian. Maybe she could bring her pussy-fuck partner to their private party and the two dyke sluts could scissor across his Cialis-engorged member until he surprised all three of them. He hated the sight of that woman.

As the fantasy was failing to excite his sweaty crotch, the shiny chrome lines of Dixie Clippins' wheelchair rolled into a reflective overlay on the interior of his office window. Leave it to the tattooed redneck broad to interfere with his daydreaming just as Emily Rutkowski was bending over to display the curve of her tight ass.

Finkter begrudgingly shifted his vision toward his visitor. He bulged his sole eyeball, exophthalmic and crimson where the white should be, as he racked his focus toward Dixie's entrance across the dingy office carpet. "How'd you get in here?"

"Back door," Dixie said.

Finkter's fake eye squanked out a nauseating fart as he shoved the concave glass into his moist, vacant socket. He made a mental note to permanently bolt that back door shut.

"You see that nigger bitch out front?" the fat redneck woman asked, standing up out of her prop wheelchair like she had just been faith healed.

"Sit your sorry ass back down in that goddamn wheelchair, you fuckin idiot!" Finkter's blood pressure — already boiling from the untimely interruption — tripled, as the stupid bitch strolled toward the front window on her own two feet. "No standing up, ever! Not here, not there, not anywhere! Not even in your own apartment!" He shoved Dixie back toward her wheelchair.

Dixie stumbled backward, regained her footing, and raised a threatening fist at Finkter.

He held up his palms to signal an end to the physical conflict. "Dixie," he said. "How many goddamn years have you worked for me?"

Dixie leaned over like she was at the gym. She reached for her toes and managed to touch her kneecaps, stretching her neglected glutes before looking up. "Since the year before Andre got locked up," she said.

"I said how many fucking years." Finkter glanced in a wall mirror and noticed that he had extreme wall-eye. "I didn't ask for no names," he spat at Dixie. " _Especially that one._ "

"And as I said, I been workin for you since a year or so before Andre got locked up." Dixie did three jumping jacks before getting winded.

"I said: How. Many. Fucking. Years? That's all I said."

Dixie Clippens stared at Finkter, and got a faraway look in her eye.

# # #

It had been a Sunday, almost thirty years ago, but she remembered it like it was yesterday.

Dixie Clippens had absolutely zero cause to believe Earl Finkter was anything but a bona fide Esquire. He was smart, he was white, and he paid cash.

Finkter tossed a set of keys to the blackest man Dixie had ever seen. The dude juggled them, then threw them like a hot potato directly toward Dixie's face.

Dixie snatched the keys overhand in midair, while the clinking ring was still climbing to apogee. A confederate flag tattoo proudly flapped on her shoulder like it was in battle at Fort Sumpter.

"She's drivin, not me," the black man said to Finkter. Then he turned to Dixie and extended his hand for a shake. "Andre Turnipseed," he said to her. "What's your name little girl?"

"Dixie," she said. "Dixie Clippens." She gave him a firm handshake while studying his features. His dark sheen and muscular frame were exotic. The white people's handshake they started out with seamlessly morphed into a soul shake that brought them closer together, both physically and emotionally. Dixie made eye contact with the dude before releasing his hand. She was satisfied that her strong attitude had come across in their brief exchange. He didn't need to know she had driven her twenty-two years of life to the absolute rock bottom of its financial thread. She looked over at Finkter. "You sure this is gonna work?" Her lilt was straight outta Carolina.

"Hell yeah it's gonna work just fine," Finkter said. "Just follow my instructions to the T."

She noticed that the black dude, Andre, was ogling her navel. She had made sure her little belly button was visible between her fluorescent pink hot pants and her Stars-N-Bars tube top. She winked it at him. Then she marched around the filthy, faux-wood panel station wagon, giving the black man a view of the curvy ass she'd poured into those sexy hot pants like they were a pair of shimmering jello-filled water balloons.

She popped the driver's door open with a dry-humped metal-on-metal screech, and then plopped behind the wheel. She inhaled the rancid rubber aroma emanating from the crowd of bald, punctured and deceased radials stacked akimbo from the rear window of the cargo compartment, all the way around her seat and headrest, a nauseating stench.

The black dude got in the car beside her, bringing a welcome whiff of Right Guard.

"Gimme a cigarette," Dixie said.

He flipped open his Parliaments, shook out a stick and pointed it in her direction.

"No goddamn pine trees," she said, waving her hand to reject his menthol.

He backflipped the cigarette and caught the filter between his lips. He cupped his hand around a Bic lighter, sparked the flint and inhaled a lungful like it was some kind of miracle cure that was saving his life.

Dixie wrapped her delicate, pink-nailed fingers around the key, twisted the ignition, and awakened a sluggish starter motor. Her slender ankle, white as fresh churned cream, pumped the pedal to prime the carb. The starter cranked but the engine didn't catch.

Andre scooched up and down in his seat, pulling and tugging at his jeans like he was having difficulty getting his balls comfortable.

Dixie was relentless on the poor car, cranking the complaining beast until its battery was nearly expired. She finally succeeded in cultivating combustion just before the car uttered its death rattle, and then held the pedal to the floor until she redlined the elderly engine. She coaxed the rich mixture with her foot until the cylinders heated, and the flywheel's kinetic energy smoothed the unbalanced motor into an equilibrium. An oily black cloud of pungent, unburnt fuel filled the industrial garage.

Finkter leaned in the driver's window. "You guys," he said, "you guys got everything going for ya."

Dixie threw the car into D and chirped a wheel on the slick concrete.

Finkter backed out of the window and stood up. "Remember, pick a Wilson, or a Overnite, something big, not no goddamn two-bit company." He was foaming now, spittle spewing from his lips. "And stay away from the tankers. No explosions. I can't claim nothing on no death, ya gotta stay alive, alright?"

And then the two were off on their own, doing 80 in a 55, weaving, swerving, scouting for a mark amidst the failing infrastructure of Detroit's steel-plated freeways, pot-holed parkways, and decrepit bridges.

As she drove, Dixie reviewed her options one final time, just to make sure she was doing the right thing. The only other potentially viable economic choice she had was a theoretical engagement in misdemeanor solicitation. It was admittedly a distasteful option, but nevertheless, she intended to keep it in her back pocket for several more years, hopefully even a decade, just in case. "You got any money?" she asked the black man.

"Naw," Andre said. "You?"

"I ain't got shit."

"I got a Diners Club," he said. "It's over the limit but it might still work. We can try it."

"What the fuck is a Diners Club?"

"Credit card."

"Ain't never heard of it," she said. "When did ya try it last?"

"Couple hours ago."

"Did it work then?"

"No."

"When's the last time it worked?"

"Oh I don't know," he said, scooping a booger out of a nostril with his coke-spoon pinky fingernail. "Probably last year sometime." He flicked the booger out the window.

They drove a half-mile in silence before she spoke. "Let's face reality, my brotha. We're both broke. That's why we're here." Her velvet hands gripped the wheel like she had just flunked driver's ed, but her neon pedicure exhibited complete command of the engine and brakes. She stared into Andre's eyes.

He returned her solemn expression.

Until this very morning, these two human beings had been complete strangers, but now they were eerily akin, a couple who had been professionally handpicked from a pool of desperate losers, loners, psychopaths, and the marginally mentally ill. They were destined to embark upon a journey into the felonious world of conspiracy, fraud, and possible actual bodily injury, or even outright death. They were the con artist equivalent of porn stars, and they could feel it in their bones.

Dixie's nipples hardened, aroused by the strange young black outlaw's intense gaze. The refrigerated breath of the old Oldsmobile's freon exhaled straight through the fabric of her tube top. It groped her braless breasts like an icy lover from the core of the Rolling Stones.

Her peripheral vision told her the black man was lighting a bowl before she ever whiffed it. He held the toke deep in his lungs and passed the jointed chrome stoner's pipe in her direction. She joined him in the herb. She liked this guy. He had a good vibe. She wrestled a ragged baggie from her own taut hip pocket and tossed it in his direction. It contained three skinny wrinkled doobies that had been sensuously form-fitted to the curve of her ass, most assuredly possessed of her personal erotic atmosphere. "Light up one of them next."

Brand name trucks, that's what Finkter had said, big, expensive, brand name trucks.

Pleasantly stoned, Dixie forced her way in front of a shiny red Mac, merging their ass end so close to the Mac's grille, its bulldog could've jumped onto their luggage rack. The Mac was a major label, with a cranky, cursing, impatient driver who was hellbent on intimidating the occupants of the tire-filled station wagon.

Andre ducked as his partner pumped the spongy brakes, testing the plan, but the crusty old trucker swerved his big rig like Le Mans, blaring triple chrome trumpets as he passed, while bitching a warning to other drivers on his CB radio.

Andre released his breath, exhaling weed smoke from Dixie's second joint. "Shit's excellent." The girl's face was flushed, excited, pink and pretty. She giggled, then laughed aloud. She had to have noticed the lump growing in the front of Andre's britches.

After inhaling a big beautiful bud, Dixie swerved in front of the second rig and wasted no time inviting a rear-ender, standing tiptoe on the brake like a child begging for candy. The rig barreled down on the two of them like a bulldozer on a frog, causing Dixie to chicken out, swerve toward the breakdown lane, and punch the gas in a slim getaway. She caught her breath and snuck a glimpse of her handsome and brave cohort, fetally pretzeled down into the floorboard, peeking back through the tires, uttering a breathy "fuuuuuuuck" as a pair of chemtrails descended from his nostrils. Dixie giggled, her genitals moist and aglow, clamoring for the excitement of a masculine, testosterone-driven divergence with her new pal.

The third attempt ended as the marked rig excitedly hopped to a full-on emergency-brake stop, a mere six inches from their rear bumper, before being rear-ended itself by an idiot in a Mercedes convertible. Dixie was on fire for this nigga.

She floored it to the next exit, steered the rickety station wagon at top speed down the Mitten's roads less traveled. She finally located the perfect secluded gravel pull-off, twisted the wheel, and slid sideways to a stop off the road near some county dumpsters. Andre jumped out and dropped the wagon's tailgate. The two of them tossed tires into the ditch until there was enough room for Adam and Eve to lay together in paradise on the filthy floorboard between the remaining wrecked Firestones, Goodyears and Dunlops.

She tossed her top, revealing an indiscriminate scrapbook of confederate memorabilia, permanently enshrined by the tattooist's needle across the panorama of her pale skin. The Battle of Antietam raged across her ribcage. Rebel snipers aimed muskets from the southern ramparts of her sideboob. Her nipples were pink cannonballs in mid flight.

Andre flipped his wifebeater over his head. His naked torso was a glistening ripple of well toned muscle, sharp silver highlights contrasted against the deep abyss of forbidden equatorial African onyx.

They embraced each other in a perfect union of stoned souls, his jeans unzipped just enough to achieve copulation, her rebel flag panties retreating, surrendering to his advances.

Dixie played the part of the angelic southern belle, the porcelain princess daughter of the slave-driving plantation owner, a delicate, parasol-toting stranger to the sun, white as yogurt with fruit on the bottom.

He, in turn, was her fearless, raging mandingo, blacker than coal, a rebellious slave, a renegade from Sherman's army. His sinews shimmered, glossy on his sweaty skin, as he rent the Stars and Bars, and burned her secret Atlanta to the ground.

Sure to be facing certain death by tractor-trailer before sunset, the two lovers let their inhibitions fly, and prematurely achieved the rudimentary romantic motions necessary to reproduce the species. Due to subsequent emotional denial, idle procrastination, and Diners Club's refusal to issue a $125 cash advance — a misunderstanding of modern economics that would prove to have severe financial consequences down the road — the two mismatched lovebirds had no other choice but to welcome, some nine months later, a brown, naked, screaming, homeless child into their lives.

Little Da'Ndre Turnipseed turned out to be a rustic blend of two distinct races, complete opposites who were spurred to impetuous copulation by suspense, fear, illicit activity, a moderate amount of mediocre Mexican marijuana, and socially forbidden camaraderie.

When they had finished, they buttoned up, repacked the tires, found their true mark on I-75, and successfully ran a giant tractor-trailer up their own tailpipe in a horrendous hail of air horn, busted glass and crumpled tires, until they were sure Mr Earl Finkter, Esquire, would receive the proper attention from the liability adjustment department at the Illinois Mutual Insurance Company.

# # #

"Twenty-nine dirty, filthy, stinkin, rotten years! That's how fucking long you've been a charity case." Finkter turned away from Dixie and looked out the window.

Emily Rutkowski, the sexy dog trainer lady across the street, was herding her mutts helter-skelter through the dusty lot, encouraging the idiot dogs to discover an obvious stick of dynamite she'd barely hidden in an overturned galvanized pail. Instead, they ran around like it was playtime at the dog park. That batch of dogs must have been the stupid class.

"Tell me, Miss Dixie, exactly what haven't you fucked up in the last twenty-nine years?"

Dixie remained as quiet as a guilty school kid in the principal's office. She knew the current round of fraud and felony would be over in a few months, and she'd be able to walk like a normal person for thirty days if she was lucky. But then, she knew he'd give her another fake ID like usual and she'd have to go arrange another fake accident. And then she'd have to spend another two years pretending to be injured so they could scam the insurance company. But the insurance company would send out private investigators to try and catch her doing normal physical activity, so she would have to stay in a wheelchair 24/7/365. Even in her own apartment, because the private eyes had ways to spy and catch her anywhere, anytime.

How she longed for throwing away that goddamned wheelchair and walking around free like a normal human being! But too many years had passed. She had frittered away her opportunity to become a high-class hooker. She didn't have a high school diploma to fall back on. But even if she enrolled in Harvard and got a college degree, she wouldn't be able to survive the work day, locked away in some corporate cubicle for hours on end with nothing but microwave popcorn and coffee. Now she had no legitimate employment opportunities except perhaps at Walmart or Burger King, and both of those required getting up in the morning. "The Kingsley case turned out alright."

Finkter half-stared at her for double his normal time. "Kingsley," he spat.

Dixie knew he couldn't dispute her word. Dixie had picked the right mark when she invited Dr Kingsley's Bentley to partake of a rear-ender. And she was in the courtroom when the jury awarded three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars.

"That's just because he was too fucked up by the crash to fight us in court," Finkter said. "You think I'm getting that kind of money from the goddamn insurance companies in settlements anymore? They beat me down to nothing after the verdict, or else they appeal."

"If you want me to move on to another one I'm gonna need a lectric chair and a van with a elevator." She paced a circle, putting fire to a bud, inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in her lungs.

" _I gave you_ a goddamn van," he said. "You totaled it. Into a fucking power pole. While you were drunk."

"That was six years ago. You can afford another one by now."

"Oh really? You think all this stuff is free? You think new identities grow on trees?" Both his eyes were threatening to pop in different directions. "There's driver's, passport, social. It's all computerized these days. Chips, holograms, watermarks, embossing, RFID — it ain't easy no more like it used to be. Shit ain't cheap."

"I'm still gonna need a lectric chair and a van."

Finkter peered outside, tapped a gnarly fingernail on the office window. "Bitch is pretty good," he said, pointing toward the flossing young negro woman with the parallel-parked Voyager. "She's a pro. You keep your fat ass in that goddamn wheelchair, quit smoking that weed, get the fuck back to your apartment, and stay there."

"Maybe I oughta turn your ass in to her," said an ignorant, irritated hillbilly woman's voice from the middle of Dixie's cloud of pot smoke. "Maybe I can make more money that way."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

### MONDAY NOON

"Oh shiiiiit," Da'Ndre uttered upon seeing his ultra-black felonious father for the first time in seventeen years.

Andre Turnipseed padded out from underneath the romantic granite archway of Aberdeen State Penitentiary and gazed up at the open sky as if he had never seen such a glorious sight. He was outfitted in filthy cotton athletic socks and a baby blue miniskirt. He held his arms wide and pirouetted to take in the full beauty of the heavens.

Da'Ndre watched patiently as his father indulged himself in his simple celebration of freedom. As the old man spun around, Da'Ndre saw three bows neatly tied in the back of his gown, and caught a glimpse of his father's coal black ass shining through the gap.

After completing three full circles, Andre leveled his gaze at his son, standing there in Nimrod's police uniform. "You're a fuckin _cop?_ "

"Shhhh..." Da'Ndre said.

"Never in my wildest dreams," the old man said. "A muthafuckin twenty-nine-year-old _cop_? With no car of your own? I am so goddamn disappointed in you, son."

From a distance of fifty parking spaces, Da'Ndre saw Gaia, JC and police dog Missy peering out the Jesus bus door. All three of them were exhibiting inquisitive expressions. Da'Ndre glanced back at his dad, and saw that Andre was preoccupied with closing the split in the ass-end of his hospital outfit. While his father wasn't looking, Da'Ndre seized the opportunity to display a clandestine shit-eating grin and an A-OK salute to JC's Warriors and the police dog.

Da'Ndre hoisted his overabundant cop pants back up to his waist and put his brown arm around his father's black shoulders. "Listen, dude, I ain't no fuckin cop, aight? But right now you gotta pretend to be a cop just like me."

The brand new ex-con knocked his son's arm off his shoulder and squared off with him like he was a mental case ready to rumble. "What the fuck?" he said. "I'm walkin out a seventeen year stretch right smack dab into a goddamn felony you done got all cooked up for me? Right here? I ain't even left the parkin lot of the goddamn prison yet!" The old man glared at his son, his two socked feet planted firmly in the middle of the correction facility's pavement. "I am so ashamed of you, boy. Where's my goddamn car?"

"Listen, I found some folks with some money, aight? They got food, they got gas, and they drivin to Motown." Da'Ndre flipped a flyer out of the breast pocket of his cop shirt, unfolded it. It was an ad for a Christian Rock Competition with a $10,000 top prize. "They're gonna compete in the Evangelipalooza. That's in Detroit. That's where we goin, ain't it? That's where you think momma might be, right?"

The old man grabbed the flyer, eyeballed it. There was a photo of a huge megachurch on the front. "I don't wanna go to no goddamn Christian Rock festival."

Da'Ndre pulled his father across the parking lot. "Listen, Dad...your car's fucked, aight? It's gone. Dead. Not an option. Forget about it," he said. "These people, they goin to Detroit. You pretend to be a cop just like me. We tell em you're undercover and we're golden. You got a better plan, you tell me right now."

Andre loped alongside his son, his head buried in the flyer. His lips were moving like he was reading a kindergarten book. Then he looked up, straight into Da'Ndre's face. "I want my goddamn car, boy. That's a better plan. I don't like this bullshit at all."

"Just follow my lead."

Andre scanned across the lot in the direction of their travel. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the old short bus. It was completely wrapped in an artsy advertising billboard. The entire side of the bus was plastered with a depiction of an ultra-high contrast Jesus on the cross. The Christ was graphically suffering in a wide-angle black and white articulation. He was dripping crimson, the only actual color on the entire billboard. The deity's passive, dying countenance stared right into Andre's eyes. His bloody left palm was nailed to the cross in the extreme foreground. The fingers on the stigmatized hand had a death grip on the neck of an electric guitar, because the duo used to have a really rad lead guitarist before the flake lost his faith, orchestrated an emotional split with the band, and joined the Coast Guard. Andre's jaw wobbled as he took in the sight. "You ain't takin me to that goddamn retard Jesus bus, are you?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

### EVIDENCE

"I wish we knew where that old key was," said Officer of the Year Purvis Q Nimrod III, as he pried around the lip of the multicolored Galaxie's trunk lid with an undersize Harbor Freight demolition bar.

He had succeeded in rippling the steel around its perimeter but the trunk's lock was too strong and stubborn to break open. Nimrod placed the tip of his crowbar near the lock and pushed down as hard as he could, determined to bust it.

As it turned out, however, the little black wrecking bar had a plan of its own. Instead of busting the lock, it sprung from the tension of the half-bent trunk lid and smacked a pink rectangle into the slope of Nimrod's forehead. The deputy stumbled and uttered a guttural complaint. He fingered the knot as it inflated with blood, then he clapped a hand over his mouth. Crimson rivulets snuck between his knuckles. He spat into his palm and begat a tawny trapezoid, a ragged flat stone, yellow as school chalk but framed with nicotine. He looked up at Chief Dingledine with sad eyes, then spread his lips in a wide grimace, displaying a prominent hole where a front tooth had once been.

"I done told ya, yer wasting yer time," Police Chief Red Dingledine said. "That car's been over at Sugarplum's junkyard for the last seventeen years, and that trunk ain't never been opened up, not once in all that time."

Nimrod tried to stop the bleeding by shoving his thumb into the hole where his tooth had been, then lisped like a preschooler. "But Mithy thmelled thomething, Thief. I know thee did."

"That dog is so old she don't even sniff ass no more," the chief said. He spit a wad of tobacco juice on the floor three paces away from the center drain. "That nigger wasn't hauling no drugs. He was drivin north to go pick up his daddy at the prison."

"He lookth exthactly like his daddy'th old mug thot," Nimrod said.

"Here," Chief Dingledine said. "Try this." He flipped a classic Ford key at Nimrod like it was a silver dollar from the tooth fairy.

Nimrod caught the key with his free hand and gazed at the brass core peeking through its worn chrome finish. It was an old, oval-headed key. "Ith thith the key to open the twunk?"

"Try it and see."

Nimrod shoved the key into the keyhole and twisted it. The trunk gently popped. "What the fuck?" he said, "I buthted my tooth out fer nothin?"

Chief Dingledine opened a cabinet and extracted half a dozen gallon-size ziplocs, all stuffed full of marijuana like they were sofa pillows.

"That'th drugth from the evidenthe locker, Thief," Nimrod said. "We can't put that in there."

Chief Dingledine chugged a river of El Jimador, guiding it with his tongue around the plug of tobacco in his cheek. He stepped up to the car and lifted the trunk lid, ignoring his deputy's whining. The yellow glow from the garage fluorescents expanded into the trunk's dank interior, revealing the spare tire with its slashed steel belts, ragged and wiry, still grinning like a hillbilly's jack-o-lantern, still tucked into a knee-deep pile of miscellaneous greasy detritus that had been locked inside, still the same as it ever was, for seventeen years.

"Fuckin nigger," the chief said. "If we don't teach him a lesson, it's all just a mute point, ain't it?" The chief tossed the six ziploc bags of weed into the trunk and slammed it shut. "Three pounds won't get most niggers locked up anymore," he said. "But a felon just out of Aberdeen Penitentiary...well, let's just say, we won't have to worry about him no more."

"But Thief...that ain't wight to plant them drugth in there like that."

Chief Dingledine pulled a document out of his shirt pocket and held it up in front of Nimrod's face. It was an old speeding ticket, yellowed with age. The writing on it was smeared with a foreign substance, crusty goo, like aged paste from a kindergarten art project. The ticket had Nimrod's signature on it. "Look what I ended up with," the chief said.

"How-how-how'd you get-get-get _that?"_ Nimrod stuttered.

Both men knew the cornrowed brown woman who drove the droptop Mustang. They knew Nimrod had caught her on radar doing 68 in a 25 school zone, because Nimrod had wrote all that down, right there on the ticket itself. They both knew she had tempted Nimrod into her waterbed and got him naked. They knew she had wrapped her elastic feet around Nimrod's little boner like she was a chimpanzee, and they both knew it only took a few pulls before he erupted three whole thimblefuls of man-seed all over her exposed titties. They knew she had used the ticket to wipe up his cute little mess, because that is what she had planned all along. They knew she had threatened to turn Nimrod's — she used the formal term _spermatozoa_ — over to the authorities, unless her speeding ticket disappeared into the dustbins of bureaucracy. And they knew Nimrod had borrowed a password without proper authorization so he could zero out the charge in the county computer.

They both knew that, because that same sexy temptress had done the same thing to every cop on the county force, except Chief Dingledine himself. The chief had will power over her foxy, flexible feet. No matter how much she tugged and cajoled, she was just too feminine for the chief's taste. She couldn't even keep him hard.

"Go clean yourself up, boy," Chief Dingledine said. "You're gettin blood all over the garage."

Nimrod started toward the utility sink, but was distracted by a black Crown Vic he saw outside the garage windows. It was cruising real slow, wavy and distorted through the old glass as it passed. "What the fuck ith _that?"_

Dingledine walked toward the garage windows, massaging the hooked scar on the edge of his mouth with his pinky as he watched the car roll by.

Nimrod approached the windows, joining his chief. "Hey, I remember that bith, or bathtard, whatever it ith," he said. "Yeah! It'th that nigger dyke bith, the Thtate Thnooper. Wemember her? Thee's the one that come down here firtht time we buthted ol Turniptheed in thith very car! You wemember her, don't ya, Thief? Thee's the one from the crath! The one that pithed her panth!"

Dingledine pondered the intrusion. "DC tags," he said. "Get the number and run em."

# # #

Many years before, Red Dingledine had been pissed off when the Supreme Court forced all the police departments in the country, from sea to shining sea, to hire a bunch of niggers. But since then, he thought, why not make the best of it? It was always better to have one of the same demographic testify against another. So he put in a call to an old buddy up in Atlanta who owed him a favor. They arranged for a nigger state cop to be taken off radar duty and sent in special to witness the prearranged discovery of the incriminating evidence hidden inside the Galaxie's spare tire.

When he first saw her in his rear view, while they were chasing Andre Turnipseed south on 95, he couldn't tell if she was a masculine female or a sexy guy. When the Snooper raced up beside him at 105 miles per hour — a reckless maneuver on such a skinny access road — she made direct eye contact with him. Stared at him for an entire millisecond, sending a shiver up his spine. Hers were the eyes of the little girl whose daddy had been gunned down by Red's own daddy some thirty years before. He recognized her immediately, and based on the look she was giving him, the recognition was mutual.

Forty-seven seconds later, when Red Dingledine slid his unmarked detective's cruiser to a stop in the middle of a white dust cloud, he saw the full glory of the little pickaninny with the GI Joe he remembered from the courtroom so many years ago.

Gayle Wright was an androgynous brown meatball with a bald head, heavy blue eye shadow, a pair of I-dare-your-white-ass-to-fire-me rainbow earrings, and a big, fat, shitty attitude. She had become a true freak of nature, stuffed inside a bulging State Police uniform, compliments of the goddamn liberal yankee nutjobs who stuck their noses into Georgia's personal business.

When Red Dingledine had opened the Galaxie's trunk, he immediately discovered that Andre Turnipseed had played him like a fiddle. The uppity nigger had turned the mighty Shannon County detective into an embarrassed chump. If the busted-up police cars, jack-o-lantern grin in the spare tire, and absence of contraband wasn't enough humiliation, Gayle Wright had then taken over the entire situation when she manhandled Red Dingledine down onto his knees, disarmed him, held him down at gunpoint, grazed a hot, copper-jacketed .40 across his right ear, and spilled his white blood. It felt like she had gotten big, and he had gotten little. If she hadn't figured out that the entire bust had been a setup, she would have been in a shitload of trouble.

Thank God his daddy had finally arrived with backup and saved his ass from any further unwarranted reverse discrimination.

# # #

On the night Andre Turnipseed had double-crossed them and foiled the setup, Red Dingledine himself had had absolutely no choice but to provide the suspect with a sporting chance to supersize the charges against him. Otherwise, Turnipseed might have gotten off with a slap on the wrist, and Dingledine himself would have been sanctioned for violating the constitutional rights of a uppity yankee nigger, and engaging in an unjustified high speed chase that crushed a John Deere and sent an innocent white farmer to the hospital with a broken femur.

So in order to set things in order, Dingledine had to make a personal appearance at the hospital room where Turnipseed — wrapped up like a mummy — had been opiated into a coma and chained to a bed like a common criminal.

At 11:11 p.m. on the evening of the crash, the Shannon County detective arrived with a baker's dozen kreme-filled crullers from the Donut Hole, and a jumbo cup of decaf, which he had laced with a triple shot of Aristocrat, and then claimed was caffeinated. He left all thirteen of the donuts and the liquored-up coffee in the care of Officer Richard Thurman, an aging, sugar-intolerant flatfoot, whom Red's daddy had assigned to stand guard over the black suspect through the night, an assignment that was made at his son's request.

Before Dingledine left Turnipseed's hospital room, Dickie Thurman's eyes got as glazed as the donuts. When Dingledine snuck back into the room an hour later, seven donuts had gone missing from the box, the vodka decaf had been good to the last drop, and Officer Thurman had slumped so far over, his left lung was noisily drowning in its own sputum. The poor old uniform was definitely edging a diabetic coma.

Without waking Thurman up, Dingledine crept over to the unconscious cop and hung a handcuff key on his belt. He had made sure it was conspicuous, in plain view to Andre Turnipseed, should the criminal mummy wake up. Then he circled around the back side of the hospital bed, and folded the plastic tube that was dripping morphine into the nigger's arm, to stop the flow of the drug. He wedged it into the scissor lift mechanism under the hospital bed, and arranged everything to make it look like it had got pinched there by complete accident.

Now, maybe that uppity nigger would wake up, notice the key hanging on the unconscious cop's belt, and decide to jump up and get himself a good long prison sentence, so Detective Red Dingledine wouldn't have to worry about nothin.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

### MONDAY NIGHT

The moonless night sky threw an opaque blanket over the campground. The primal screeching of swamp-dwelling bullfrogs provided an effective audio overlay, masking the sound of whispers and snapping twigs. It was the perfect environment for an ambush.

Chief Dingledine's old eyes suffered from mediocre visual acuity in the dark. Officer Purvis Q Nimrod shined his flashlight beam on the vine-covered bunny path to assist his chief. The clumsy pair picked their way through the wooded underbrush into the heart of Happy Campers Holiday Park, where an old short bus with Jesus crucified on the side was parked.

Nimrod stuck his trigger fingers through his belt loops and lifted up the sagging, oversized pants of the cop uniform he had borrowed from the chief, since the nigger had stolen his daily outfit, and his spare pair was ensconced at the chinky-chink dry cleaners. He ducked and motioned for Chief Dingledine to stop, but Dingledine didn't see him. The old man's blundering forced Nimrod to reach out from his crouched position and grab the chief's ankle to stop him before he gave their position away. In response to the ankle grab, Dingledine yelped like he'd been bit by a snake.

"Shhhh!" Nimrod said. "Get down!"

Dingledine squatted beside Nimrod and took a slug out of a silver flask with a sheriff's badge engraved on it. "What is it?"

"It's _them,_ " Nimrod said. His speech was still slurred by the gap in his front teeth, but at least he wasn't sucking his thumb like a preschooler anymore.

"WHAT?"

"Shhhh! It's _them._ " Nimrod pointed toward a campfire. He passed a pair of binoculars to his boss and whispered. "They're the only people in the entire campground, sir."

The chief leaned his flask against a tree, put the binocs to his eyes and tuned the focus wheel. He saw a young brown man, sitting on a log in front of the fire. The dude was wearing Nimrod's old police uniform, which was now filthy with dirt and blood. He was picking an acoustic Ibinez like he was Jimi Hendrix. _Nimrod is right,_ Dingledine thought. _This guy is the spitting image of Andre Turnipseed's mug shot from seventeen years ago, except his skin is nearly as light as añejo mezcal._ He must be Turnipseed's little boy all grown up, the one that was with him on the day of the crash, the one whose head formed the centermost orb in the windshield, the one Nimrod took to the hospital, the one the county social workers put up for foster care. He wondered what kind of crazy people would want to raise that kind of criminal child. He took another swig of his tequila.

Dingledine could see Missy, Shannon County's official police K-9, resting her chin on the brown dude's knee. Dingledine would be thrilled to get rid of that slobbering old shitbag, but for the purposes of the law, that dog was stolen property. She snored, basking in the warmth radiating from the perfect campfire.

Two store-bought hippies, a man and a woman, sat on logs directly across the fire from each other. The male hippie had an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ. He was singing and playing a chintzy electronic keyboard that warbled around the campground like the echoes of ghost campers searching for the latrine.

The hippie woman across from Jesus was a blonde earth mother with golden braids and a psychedelic tie-dye dress that looked like it had come from the Woodstock Goodwill store. She was browning a marshmallow over the fire while reluctantly phoning in some soft vocal accompaniment.

Chief Dingledine tilted his flask again, shifted the binoculars, refocused, and saw the uppity nigger for the first time in seventeen years.

There he was, deep black and felonious. The dangerous criminal as violent and unpredictable as a pack of rabid hyenas. Andre Turnipseed. So black he could hardly be seen in the shadows. He was dressed in a cosplay outfit: hot pink polyester bell bottoms, a ruffled pastel disco shirt with a Hawaiian floral motif, and a pair of white patent leather dancing loafers with tassels. He was sitting on a log, staring into the fire, toasting his own marshmallow.

The Jesus character faded his vocals and synth to silence. Jimi Hendrix followed his lead. Jesus clenched his eyes, and after a melodramatic silence, looked up from his keyboard at the guitarist.

"Where'd you learn to play like that, Officer Nimrod?" Jesus asked.

"Just picked it up," the young brown man said.

"Self taught. Wow," Jesus said. "How about you, Officer...I'm sorry, I didn't even get your name."

"Anderson," interrupted the young brown guitarist in Nimrod's police uniform.

"Turnipseed," Andre said, shooting an irritated sidelong glance at the brown man who resembled his younger self, as if correcting him.

"Officer...Anderson...Turnipseed?" Jesus said.

"Close enough," Andre Turnipseed said.

"He's undercover," the young brown man lied.

"Oh, right," Jesus said, so gullible he bought the story. "So do you play any musical instruments, Officer Anderson Turnipseed?"

"Naw," the hot pink-clad criminal said. "Never picked it up."

"Well, you might not be a musician, but you're an excellent undercover police officer," Jesus said. "I gotta admit, if I was a terrorist, I'd have never known you were a cop, walking out of that prison in a hospital gown with your butt hanging out like that." He covered his mouth like he was going to cough, but instead he giggled.

"Well, right now, I feel like I'm a rock star." Andre Turnipseed blew the fire off his marshmallow and raised a jumbo can of Colt 45 as a toast to Jesus. "This Prince costume of yours fits me perfect."

"I mean...when you came out of that prison, you'd have thought you was one of them stupid fools locked up in there for ten years or something," Jesus said, expecting a laugh to circulate around the campfire. But nobody laughed.

"Yeah," said the younger brown guitarist. "Or seventeen."

Andre Turnipseed shot an angry look across the fire.

"What do you mean?" Jesus asked. "Why'd you say seventeen?"

"Why not seventeen?" the brown man in the cop uniform asked.

"Well, I mean, it's a pretty specific number."

"So's ten," the young brown man said, glaring laser beams into his father's eyeballs. "Seventeen is just seven years more specific. Ain't it, Officer Anderson Turnipseed?"

Jesus and the hippie chick seemed to pick up on a growing antagonism brewing between the two African-American police officers as they engaged in a staring contest against each other. Finally the young one averted his eyes, applied his fingers to frets and strummed a unique chord progression.

The earth mother listened to the new song. She shoved a sixth s'more into her mouth, practically swallowing it whole. She spread her legs wide and, with her bare hands, began drumming on the hollow log she was sitting on. Her beat merged with the guitar chords. It became primal.

Jesus experimented on his keyboard until he picked up the tune, eventually discovering a reggae pulse he dropped into the mix.

Andre Turnipseed laid back and molded his spine into the dust. He placed his head on a cold rock and gazed past the rising sparks into the night sky above like he was in a La-Z-Boy recliner at Bill Gates' house.

In the woods, the authentic Nimrod motioned to his chief in hillbilly sign language: _I'll go this way, you go that way._ The chief tilted his flask and nodded concurrence. The two men split up, sneaking in opposite directions under cover of the dark foliage.

The musical trio jammed for a few minutes, improvising a roller coaster, until the young brown man in Nimrod's cop outfit blew them away with an acoustic lead that tapered to a long final vibrato tight on the B string. He ended the song with a note he bent halfway up the fretboard.

"Wow," Jesus said, grabbing another Jet-Puft. "If you didn't have a gig as a cop, I'd talk to Gaia about putting you in our band."

"Whaddaya call that song?" the earth mother asked. "I like it."

"I call it _Peaceful Saturdays,_ " the brown man said.

"Got any lyrics for it?" Jesus asked.

"Waiting for inspiration."

The actual Nimrod and Police Chief Dingledine had circled until they were poised on opposite sides of the campsite, hidden in the darkness behind undergrowth. They saw the firelight flickering across Jesus's serene countenance as he stuck a marshmallow on a stick and leveled a holy gaze at the guitarist. "May I ask you a personal question, Officer Nimrod?"

"I guess," the brown man said, idly experimenting with a soft guitar riff.

"Oh please, Jonnie," the earth mother interjected, twirling a new marshmallow over the fire. "This is a nice evening, don't fuck it up with your religious bullshit."

"It's important, Gaia, it's about a man's eternal soul," Jesus said to her. Then he turned back to the brown man who was impersonating a cop. "Officer Nimrod...? Are you a Christian?"

The young brown man looked up from the guitar. "I been a bunch of things," he said. "But I ain't nothin at the moment, I guess."

The earth mother blew the flame off her marshmallow. "Jonnie, how about you shut the fuck up about Jesus for just one single night."

"No, Gaia, I can't," Jesus said. Then he turned his sanitized gaze toward Andre Turnipseed, still laid back, staring at the stars in his disco outfit. "So, Officer Turnipseed...how about you? Are you Christian?"

Andre Turnipseed didn't even throw a glance toward the Jesus lookalike. _"Lakum dinukum, w li dini,"_ he said to the heavens. _"Wa'ana ln 'asbah dhlk ma taebudun."_

Missy perked up her ears. She growled.

Jesus bowed his head. "Dear Lord Jesus Christ please lead Officer Anderson Turnipseed away from his false religion and into your heart."

"Jonnie would you please shut the fuck up?"

"No Gaia!" The Jesus character was adamant. "Officer Turnipseed, I must warn you — Muslim beliefs will not get you into the kingdom of heaven!"

Andre Turnipseed rolled his head toward his inquisitor. His eyes locked on Jesus until Jesus blinked. "Plenty of things will get a man sent up to heaven," he said, "but some things a man's gotta do just to stay alive right here on earth."

"FREEZE!" The genuine snaggletooth Officer Nimrod burst from the darkness, running toward the four campers with his gun drawn and his flashlight shining in their eyes. His gigantic pants were falling off his waist.

"POLICE! Put your hands up!" Old Chief Dingledine shouted with his gruff bark, arising from the woods, limping through sticker bushes, advancing toward the foursome from the opposite direction. His legs were clumsy stumps, asleep from lack of circulation. His knees cracked. He waved his pistol erratically, arbitrarily threatening random birds' nests. He was carrying a silver flask in his other hand.

Jesus dropped his s'more stick into the fire. He stood up and thrust his hands into the air as if praising Jehovah. "Don't shoot! Please don't shoot!"

Earth Mother just sat there, toasting her marshmallow and ignoring the cops.

Da'Ndre and Andre busted into the woods in opposite directions.

Missy jumped over the fire like a circus lion, clamped her brown canines into the real Officer Purvis Q Nimrod's nutsack, and jerked her head back and forth while dragging him backwards.

She played tug-of-war with Nimrod's genitals until the gunshot exploded.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

### DESTINY

Gayle Wright parked her unmarked FBI car in the night shadows a few blocks down the street from the Shannon County Police Department. Her stars might not be aligned, but her story was. She was officially on vacation leave. The FBI thought her car was in the repair shop. The repair shop thought her car was on duty in the field. She had disconnected the car's odometer. So nobody at the FBI was gonna miss nothing.

It was the culmination of seventeen years of planning, and one extensive tarot session involving dozens of readings that she had interpreted with a fair degree of artistic license. It didn't matter that Jupiter and Mars had their polarities all fucked up. Gayle Wright was a free agent with a badge, a pistol, a bunch of spy gear, and real-time info. Nobody at headquarters would ever find out what she was doing, and the cards she finally dealt were close enough to what she needed to set her on her way with confidence.

Special Agent Gayle Wright was gonna get shit done.

Nonchalant, in her sweats and Birkenstocks so as not to draw any attention to herself, Gayle threw a coil of climbing rope over her shoulder and snuck around the dark perimeter of the Shannon County Police Department's sulfur-illuminated parking lot. She stayed inside the cover of the nighttime shadows until she crept alongside the windowless cinderblock wall of the police department building, the wall that Shannon County was too cheap to monitor with surveillance cameras.

She swung her grappling hook three times and launched it over top of the wall, where it clunked onto the flat roof. She dragged it until she got it hooked over the flashing, then tugged twice to test its strength.

She stepped out of her Birks, scaled up the side of the cinderblock like a mountain climber, threw her leg over the top of the wall, and mounted the rooftop in her sock feet. She padded across the Shannon County Police Department's rooftop and snuck up behind the security camera. She pulled a black plastic shopping sack out of her back pocket, shook it open and placed it over the camera like she was an executioner and it was the condemned. It was 2:17 a.m. in the morning. No one was gonna miss a few minutes of dead parking lot on the video surveillance monitor.

She belayed back down, slipped back into her Birks, strolled into the parking lot, and used her set of bump keys to jimmy the Galaxie's trunk lock. When she lifted the lid, she saw the Galaxie's spare tire buried up to its lug nuts in the garbage dump of detritus. The spare's ragged jack-o-lantern grin was still smiling. Six ziploc bags full of weed sat atop the trunk's trash like glitter on shit. Reefer like that wouldn't get the average nigga much more than probation anymore. But for a felon just out of Aberdeen State Pen, it was a setup for hard time.

She lifted the spare tire and peeked underneath. Sure enough, the dozen sticks of dynamite were still there after seventeen long years, still duct-taped in a bundle with the detonator in the middle. Those stupid hillbilly cops had been too lazy to search the trunk once they knew their setup had been foiled. She saw the cards from her old tarot deck, now scattered among the debris. That was okay, because Gayle Wright had brought a new deck to the party. She spread her feet apart, leaned over, placed her forearms on the trunk wall, and steadied herself over the trunk's interior for a quick interim reading. She flipped three cards over in quick succession. Justice upside-down. The Fool. The Lovers. Never mind that she had arranged them beforehand. This was a reading just to keep her focus. She put the deck back in her breast pocket.

She gingerly coddled the dynamite bundle, threading it out from underneath the spare tire. The gritty feel of nitro dust was delicious. She lifted the duct-taped sticks to her nostrils like they were a box of fine Cubans, and inhaled the sweet aroma.

She laid the dynamite down in a place of honor in the center of the trunk and unraveled its detonator wire. She experimented with the trunk light switch, compressing its spring-loaded plunger with her thumb, blinking the bulb a few times to verify the switch was live and working. Then she held the switch plunger down, keeping the light turned off. She unscrewed the bulb, inserted the naked copper tip of the detonator wire into the center of the bulb socket, and twisted the bulb back in to hold the wire in place. Now, when the trunk was opened, twelve volts would flow to the detonator and the dynamite would explode.

As soon as she figured out how to close the trunk without releasing her thumb from the switch, her job would be finished.

CHAPTER TWENTY

### TUESDAY 3:17 A.M.

Da'Ndre became aware of consciousness, but didn't have any idea where he was. His head was pounding. The world was dark. He discovered that he was clothed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled around his ankles and wrists. He realized he was in the back seat of a cop cruiser. The vehicle was traveling at highway speed. It smelled like someone had farted in a bathtub filled with tequila.

He sat up on an elbow and peered through the wire cage at the passenger in the front seat. It was an old white cop with gray hair. His head was lazily drooping on the stump of his mole-mottled neck. He was snorting, snoring, and drooling.

Da'Ndre struggled to sit upright so he could see into the rear view mirror. When he looked into it, he established eye contact with the driver. It was Officer Nimrod, the cop that had pulled him over in the crazy Galaxie the previous night. The dude had a wicked bruise in the middle of his sloping forehead. "Where are we?" Da'Ndre croaked. "Where are you taking me?"

"You jus shut the fuck up, sit back and enjoy the ride, boy," Nimrod said, his voice hissing through the square slot where his front tooth was missing.

Da'Ndre scanned the back seat for any chance of escape. He pulled on a door handle with his toe, but it was loosely hinged with no purchase. He tried the window switch with his nose, but it was childproofed. The lock stems had been removed and the holes capped.

He laid his miniature dreads down on the seat and closed his eyes.

# # #

Da'Ndre was awakened when Nimrod swerved the car sixty degrees to the right and slammed up a concrete entrance ramp. The cruiser launched at an angle into an empty parking lot lit by amber quartz lamps. When the car rocked, the drooling old cop in the passenger seat was assaulted up side the head by his own window, which cracked his skull like a Stuckey's pecan. Droplets of rotgut flew through the air like they were on the space shuttle.

Nimrod swung a half-circle through the big empty lot and threw the cruiser into P. The car was angled across No Parking stripes beside the rear entrance of a jaundiced cinderblock building. It was a classic bilious yellow municipal rectangle. A giant antenna dominated the building like a pornographic penis, taller than any church steeple in the entire tri-county region.

Nimrod twisted his neck around til he was eyeball to eyeball with Da'Ndre through the wire mesh. "You and me," he said through his broken tooth hole, "you and me gonna get out and go into that'ar poe-leese station."

Nimrod slithered out of the cruiser, slightly hunched over a hounds-tooth pattern that had been punched into his bloody crotch by the renegade mutt. He opened the rear door and snapped a pair of disposable blue latex gloves onto his mitts. Then he grabbed Da'Ndre's ankles and yanked.

Da'Ndre shouted a profane complaint when his dreadfro - fastened to the cruiser's rear seat by his own congealed blood — was ripped like a band-aid off a scab.

When Nimrod hand-dragged Da'Ndre through the parking lot, all Da'Ndre could do was hold onto his nuts and scream.

But there wasn't no one around to hear him.

# # #

Nimrod shoved Da'Ndre through a door into a back office. It had fluorescent ceiling lights, a huge oak desk, and a single pine stool adorned with dribbles that could have once been someone's blood. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke.

The old cracka cop had one foot on the floor and his opposite haunch hiked up on the corner of his desk. Da'Ndre saw a placard on the desk beside the old cop's fat ass cheek: _Chief Red Dingledine,_ it said.

Using the glowing ember of his stinking cigar as his pointing device, the old cop — who logically must have been Chief Dingledine — casually waved his hand toward the blood-spattered stool. "Sit his sorry black ass over thar," he said to Nimrod.

The chief took another drag on his cigar, walked around behind his desk and sat down. He stroked his cigar with his left hand and slipped his right into a desk drawer, as if he had someone's penis in there to fondle.

Nimrod plopped Da'Ndre onto the Shannon County PD's interrogation stool. Then he limped to the light switch near the door while coddling his balls. He swiped his hand down across the chrome face plate and ditched the fluorescents.

The windowless cinderblock chamber was plunged into a darkness so deep, it was blacker than Da'Ndre's daddy's Saharan skin with a deep Hawaiian Tropic suntan.

A spotlight clicked on. It was an intense light, shining directly into Da'Ndre's blinking eyes. Chief Dingledine spoke from behind it.

"Well boy, I think you got a few things to tell us about," he said.

"I want a lawyer."

"People in Hades want ice tea," the chief said, swigging from a bottle that glinted when he raised it to his lips. Da'Ndre then saw the cigar's ember trace a trail through the darkness up to Dingledine's mouth, where it glowed as he sucked it. Then the ember dropped back down to waist height. "Whar's yer daddy at, boy?"

"Fuck you," Da'Ndre said. "Even if I knew I wouldn't tell your cracka ass."

Dingledine's ember levitated and approached until Da'Ndre could see the outline of the chief's gut intruding into the light beam. "Is he gonna come down here lookin fer ya?" Saliva glistened as it arced through the hot halogen and sprinkled onto Da'Ndre's nose.

"Yeah," Nimrod said, the outline of his hands cupping his balls barely visible in profile. "Your daddy is worth a thousand bucks to me."

"Dead or fucking alive," Dingledine said. "But that's just between the three of us."

"If my daddy comes down here, he'll be looking for _your_ sorry ass, not mine," Da'Ndre said. "He don't give a shit about me. Never has, never will."

Dingledine drew through the cigar and fogged the room again. "Put him in the can."

Nimrod's disembodied nightstick entered the cone of light. It poked Da'Ndre's ribs, prodding him toward the cellblock. "Let's go, nigger."

"Don't you touch me with that stick, muthafucka."

Chief Dingledine emerged from the darkness, entering the arc of light with a shiny silver six-shooter in his hand. He held the trigger in the firing position with his forefinger and thumb-cocked the hammer until its spring was as tight as The Discus Thrower. Da'Ndre could see the bullets staring at him from the chambers. There was no catch on the hammer when the trigger was pulled.

Dingledine stuck the cigar in his mouth, then throttled Da'Ndre with his free hand. He kicked the stool out from under Da'Ndre and shoved him down onto the cold cement floor by the throat. He rested the barrel of the cocked pistol on Da'Ndre's forehead, right in the middle of where his spittle had been landing. Da'Ndre's life rode on the friction between the chief's sweaty thumb and the gun's slick silver hammer. The chief was trembling from fear, exhaustion, and Pepe Lopez. "This ain't no goddamn youtube video, nigger. Ain't no one gonna know what the fuck happens in here right now. So you got one last chance. Where's your daddy at?"

"Fuck you."

Nimrod's boots entered the light and then Da'Ndre's dreads were shampooed with Mace. Da'Ndre rolled into a wheezing fetus. Then he heard the serial snapping of an electric stun gun. Nimrod's 30,000 volts encouraged Da'Ndre to crawl toward the safety of a jail cell.

"Atta boy!"

"Get your sorry black ass in there, nigger!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

### TO BE READ ALOUD

Cold, hungry, tired, hurt, must keep going.

Must keep going.

Weeds, pavement, woods, concrete, swamps, cars, family, home.

Family home, family home.

Must keep going.

Must keep going.

[repeat]

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

### WEDNESDAY

In his pink bell bottoms and ruffled pastel Hawaiian shirt, Andre Turnipseed figured he looked just like any other anonymous and destitute south Georgia negro on his way to sharecrop, kill snakes or steal whiskey. He was hungry for a Whopper and down to $43.17 by the time he spotted Shannon County's police communications antenna growing in the bus window like his very own hard-on for revenge.

While in prison, Andre's hacker cellie showed him how to get access to certain public records. Andre memorized the entire inventory of Shannon County Police Department's vehicles, guns and personnel, just in case he ever needed that information. As the bus slammed through a pothole on the way past the police station, he took note of the parking lot. He saw the chief's car flanked by two marked cruisers up front. He caught a glimpse of the back lot and thought he spotted a car with an abstract paint job. But maybe his eyes were playing tricks.

He moved his head to see what was reflected behind the bus in the exterior rear view mirrors. He saw a black Dodge Charger tailing the bus. It had an abnormal set of vestigial antennas, like a mutant insect. No doubt it was the Shannon County Police Department's unmarked. As they passed across the county line and put Shannon County in the rear view, the Charger peeled off the bus's ass and turned back toward its home base like a mad hornet giving up the chase.

After another couple of miles, Andre asked the driver to stop. He tripped down the bus's steps into a roadside ditch in some place called Dogtown. He held his breath as Peter Pan flew away in a thunderstorm of sissy green tights and filthy diesel blowby. He crossed the street and popped his thumb out, walking backwards, farting to the north, back toward Shannon County.

At twilight, the friendly Salvadoran landscapers slowed their pickup. Andre peeked up from the truck's bed. He saw the unmarked black Charger now parked at the police station. The gardener slowed his pickup after they passed, and motioned something in Spanish. Andre hopped out of the truck and bowed a Japanese thank you, his hands together like Jesus praying. He circled into the ghostly mist of a town park and hid in the stand of tall pines until it got dark. Real dark.

The annual chorus of bullfrogs awakening in springtime masked the sound of twigs snapping under Andre's feet. He snuck from tree to tree through the pitch black woods, making his way closer to the police station. When he finally crept close enough to see, sure enough, he spotted his loyal old abstract Galaxie in the impound lot. Beside her lay a smoky, firebombed skeleton of a burned-up cop cruiser. It all matched the story Da'Ndre had told him. At least now Andre knew his son was straight up.

Andre saw that his Galaxie had received a new cracked windshield, but her front bumper was still in need of orthodontia. Her trunk lid had been vandalized, no doubt by the cops, and her old body was overrun by a pox of herpetic rust. He felt suddenly sentimental. He tiptoed to the chain link, crawled along it — making certain he was out of sight of the police station's robot cameras — then raised his head behind the fence to peer into the Galaxie's innards.

Andre saw how the seventeen puffy machine-sewn rows in his baby's cracked leatherette seats had faded from their original candy apple red to a pale pink. He saw how the remnants of the human blood rivulets — the ones that had snaked along the top of the Galaxie's dash on that day so long ago — were now as black as his own skin, meandering from the dash to the floorboard like the drooling trails of oversprayed paint. Even though the trunk lid had been bent, its original lock was valiantly holding tight.

Two sets of incoming headlights swept the parking lot, encouraging Andre to slip down and hide behind the Galaxie. It was 11:50 p.m., ten minutes to third shift. The arriving lights belonged to a pair of police cruisers. They parked. A single young white male cop emerged from each of the two cars. The police station's back door opened. Andre lifted his head and peeked all the way through the windows of the Galaxie.

The day Andre had gotten out of prison, one track of his mind was thinking he was gonna just leave it all behind. What was done was done. His bomb had never exploded, and that was probably good. The best thing for him to do now was to just move on. Go find his woman and make amends for the mistakes of the past. Start over.

The other track in his mind was saying go kill them two muthafuckas — the cop and the fake lawyer — one at a time, real slow and painful, for stealin his last seventeen years.

Andre knew in his heart he wasn't impulsive anymore like when he was younger. _I ain't never hurt no one I didn't have to,_ he muttered while his brain was arguing with itself.

His inner conflict rose until the moment he saw the white demon waddle out of the cop station's back door, dressed in blue-and-gray police regalia like he was leading a town parade to hang some niggers. Andre started getting hot under his ruffled pink polyester collar. His compulsion toward revenge was rising to victory inside his head.

Chief Red Dingledine was a lot more wrinkled, fat, gray and bald, but that was definitely him. Andre watched the old cop huddle with his two rookies in the middle of the parking lot.

Andre cupped his hands around the backs of his ears to better capture the _sotto voce_ conversation, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

All three of the cops were fondling the handles of their pistols.

The briefing broke up with nods of agreement all around. The chief waved his hand and waddled back toward the station, followed by the two rookies.

Despite the bullfrog serenade, Andre distinctly heard the time clock kachunk twice inside the station at the stroke of midnight. The pair of rookies exited, their collars unbuttoned. They jumped into their rice burners and spun wheels for home.

The puke yellow Shannon County police headquarters building became as quiet as a buried casket.

There were four empty black-and-white cruisers in the lot. The chief's car was there, a huge laser-cut badge sticker completely covering its door. The black undercover Charger and the burned out hulk completed the set. All the inventory was accounted for.

Normally, Andre knew, one car would be circling the county on the night shift. But this night, they were hunkered down in the station like survivalists, their wagons circled around the prisoner they had in jail, in anticipation of Andre's arrival.

They had the bait and they knew Andre would be showing up.

Andre slunk through the shadows and crawled up behind the dumpster. Without looking around it, he could see how the lights inside the station's hallway projected a trapezoid onto the concrete sidewalk. A limping apelike shadow grew inside it.

The door opened. Andre peeked around the dumpster and saw a pistol emerge into the sulfurous light. It was gripped by an anonymous hand. Its nose sniffed the air like a bloodhound. Its barrel searched, back and forth, like a cyclops looking for a bar fight. It locked onto Andre's eyes and stared for an unusually long time, as if it could see, as if it would spit fire and lead at any moment. Then it looked away, toward the opposite side of the parking lot. It was stupid.

A porkbellied numbnuts in a police uniform holstered the pistol as he stepped out of the building, completely unaware of Andre's presence. The cop was oddly hunched over as if he had been punched in the scrotum. He had a comb-over and a busted forehead. His eyes scanned the panorama of the parking lot, but neglected to peek around the dumpster where Andre hid. The fat cop nervously fidgeted with his gun in his hip holster, then apparently felt it was safe enough forgo the gun long enough to whip out a pouch of Red Man from his hip pocket.

Tilting the open pouch toward the parking lot lights, the cop turned his back on the dumpster and totally indulged his attention in the intricacies of pinching a cheekful of chaw out of the pack. When the cop tilted his head back to stuff the wad of tobacco into his wide-open mouth, Andre saw his chance and rushed from the shadows. The cop heard Andre and spun around too late, the wad half-stuffed into his cheek.

Andre charged with his dominant shoulder, crunching the cop's shooting arm against the sharp corner of the cinderblock. Then he roundhoused the cop's glass jaw with a prison punch that spun the pig around like a ballerina. As the cop fell, Andre saw his name badge.

[ NIMROD ]

Andre grabbed the cop's gun, but his fingers slipped. The pistol clattered onto the concrete. Both men grasped for it. Andre jumped on Nimrod like a rodeo clown on a bucking bronco, twisting the cop's hurt arm behind his back. He shoved Nimrod's face onto the pavement until his snaggle tooth poked through flesh and his lips burst bright red. Andre knew it was a good chance that the cop's anguished wail awakened the dead for miles around.

With the sinewy strength born of ultimate payback and seventeen years of pumping iron, Andre grabbed Nimrod's collar and lifted him onto his knees. "You picked the wrong team, mothafucka." A quick punch to Nimrod's gut put the chubby cop down and out. He was writhing across the cement sidewalk like a salted snail, unable to draw enough breath to cry out.

Andre yanked Nimrod's handcuffs off the cop's belt, cinched one side around Nimrod's right wrist, and clamped the other around a steel handrail post that was sunk into the concrete sidewalk. That fat-ass wasn't going nowhere.

Andre snatched the access card from the lanyard around Nimrod's neck and, on his way to the door, picked up Nimrod's wayward pistol. He paused to point it at the cop on the ground. "You keep your mouth shut, y'hear?"

"Mmmm-hmmmm," Nimrod said through lips that were pursed against the flow of blood, emphatically nodding while lying on the concrete in the fetal position.

Andre entered the police station and walked down the hallway like he owned the place. He saw tungsten glowing behind the horizontal slit underneath a closed office door labeled CHIEF RED DINGLEDINE. He walked to the door, took a breath, and savored the moment. Then he knocked politely.

"Yeah," Dingledine's voice rasped. "Come on in."

A _psst_ came from down a connecting hallway. Andre turned his head and squinted into the darkness. "Over here!" came a whisper, but there wasn't enough light for Andre to see.

"Whaddaya want?" the chief shouted from inside his office, annoyed.

Andre's eyes finally adjusted to the dark hallway. He saw his son, locked up in a cage. Da'Ndre's fists were clutched around the bars. He was modeling an orange jumpsuit like it was the latest fashion in GQ.

"Get the fuck outa here!" Andre heard his son hiss.

The chief's door opened. "Whaddaya—"

Andre kicked Chief Red Dingledine in the balls, doubling the old man over. A half-drunk pint bottle of Cuervo Gold flew out of the chief's hand and skittered across the cement floor. Andre followed the punch by grabbing the chief's ears and pulling his head down, planting a knee on the chief's cartilage. Dingledine crash-landed on his ass and then scrambled toward his desk, crawling as fast as he could, leaving a bloody streak across the floor.

Andre enjoyed the show. He didn't want to kill the muthafucka, not yet. He just wanted to start out by teaching him a lesson. He racked Nimrod's pistol, took aim, and gave the old man a chance to fumble through his desk drawer. He'd let the mothafucka have a chance at a fair fight.

"Daddy!"

"Shup boy, I'm busy!"

"Look out!"

# # #

He was curled up and shivering even though a warm ray of sunlight streamed through the row of narrow horizontal windows along the top of the cellblock and landed on his cheek.

"Well well well, if it ain't James Fuckin Brown." Chief Dingledine had a big patch on his nose, but nevertheless, he managed to force a toothy grin at Andre.

Stitch-faced, busted-toothed Officer Nimrod – still bent like an old man from his K-9 crotch problem – made a painful, thick-lipped, buck-toothed grimace at Andre through the jail cell's bars. He had a carcinogenic pillow of Skoal stuffed under his lower lip. In a white-knuckled fist, he gripped a Stonewall Jackson-motif coffee mug to spit in, in typical fashion of the local inbreds.

"What the fuck happened?" Andre asked as he sat up. He was still dressed in the stage costume that he'd borrowed from that Christian Rock band. He reached behind his head and, with the dainty tips of his fingers, explored the bump of a throbbing, crusty goose egg on the back of his skull.

"Didn't I tell ya to get the fuck outa here?" A familiar noise came from the cell next to his own.

Andre looked over into the adjoining cell. He saw his son there, wearing an orange jumpsuit.

Nimrod did a little monkey dance, bent over and pushed his face up to the bars until his cheeks were smushed. Then he snickered directly at Andre's face, while dangling his tiny handcuff keys like they were testicles he was proud of. "You forgot I had these," he cackled.

"Have we got a party lined up for you two boys," Dingledine said, leaning on the cell bars. His breath stunk of Mexican piss liquor.

"Hell yeah," Nimrod said. "We gonna—"

"Shut up, Nimrod," Dingledine said. Then he turned his attention back to the blackest man on the planet. "I got something to show you, Mr Turnipseed." Dingledine waved his bare hand across the face of the jail cell's lock, and something inside it clicked as if by magic. The chief opened the cell door a crack, just enough to throw an orange jumpsuit in. "Put on your suit and let's go find out what it is."

# # #

Chief Red Dingledine led the procession across the parking lot. Officer Nimrod brought up the rear, shoving the barrel of his pistol into the slave-chained, orange-suited negro, pushing him toward the crazy Galaxie.

Dingledine arrived at the car and turned toward Andre. He rested one hand on the bent, multicolored trunk lid while his other hand held a silver flask. "Whaddaya think we found in your trunk, Mister Turnipseed?"

"Whatever you put in there, muthafucka," Andre said. "Just like last time."

"Well how about we open it up and see?" Dingledine held up the old trunk key and leaned toward the lock. "We found this key in your belongings."

"That's a lie!"

"Hold it right there!" said an androgynous tenor from halfway across the parking lot.

The three men turned to see a butch nubian doughgirl in a suit and tie. She was a bad news supergoddess in a jumbo masculine package. With her left hand, she grabbed her lapel and flipped her black sport coat open, flashing a badge. She was so tough looking, that badge was probably pinned right through her nipple. Her right hand crossed her heart, split her cleavage at an angle, and came to rest on the handle of a pistol in a shoulder holster under her left armpit.

Nimrod whispered out of the side of his mouth closest to his chief. "It's that fat nigger bitch again, Chief. The one that used to be a State Snooper, the one that pissed her pants, the one from—"

"I know who it is, goddammit," Chief Dingledine muttered, shutting Nimrod up without shifting his eyes from Gayle Wright. He slipped his flask into his back pocket.

"I'm FBI now, muthafuckas," the big brown woman said. "I got a warrant for that man." Her right hand toggled from the shoulder holster to an interior jacket pocket. She flipped a tri-fold pamphlet of court documents open as if it was the Emancipation Proclamation. She leveled her forefinger at Andre and conjured a black magic witch's spell backed by every single libtard in the entire federal government. "Bring that nigga over here to me."

Nimrod swapped a suspicious glance with Dingledine.

"We don't take kindly to no interference from outside," Chief Dingledine said. He planted his feet firmly in the parking lot, like he was squaring off for a Texas showdown. His shooting hand moved gently, settling on the butt of his own holstered pistol.

The strange brown lesbian strutted over to Dingledine and put her face so close to his, he might have figured out she'd just dined on Combo Meal #4 at KFC. "I don't give a flying _FUCK_ what you _take kindly to_." She put quotation marks in the air with her fingers to mock his turn of phrase. Her jacket yawned when she lifted her arms to quote the air, revealing her curly black underarm hair, which was screaming _HEY YOU — LOOK AT ME_ through the sweat stains in her white button-down shirt.

Dingledine looked nauseated. "Check her paperwork," he said to Nimrod.

"Come on," Nimrod said to Andre, dragging him toward the brown clit licker so he could grab the paperwork without letting go of his prisoner. He tilted his head when he eyeballed the warrant. His lips moved when he read, just like he was taught in Shannon County Elementary.

"What's it say?"

Nimrod held the documents out to the chief. "It looks genu-wine, sir."

The muscular brown FBI Agent grabbed her paperwork from Nimrod's grip and stuck it back into her breast pocket. "Ya goddamn right they're genuine." She nodded toward the Galaxie. "What's he got in that trunk?" she asked.

"I ain't got _nothin_ in that trunk," Andre said. "I ain't seen that car in seventeen years."

"You gonna pin this on your boy in thar?" Dingledine asked, nodding toward the slit windows in the side of the police station where the jail cells were. "I guess that's what I oughta expect from a chicken shit like you." He spat tobacco juice on the pavement. "Whose is it, boy? Yours or his? Because one of you is getting charged if we find anything."

Andre felt like his head was going to explode as he glared at Dingledine. He had no verbal response.

"How bout we look in the trunk, then?" The genderbending Agent suggested, resting her hand back on her pistol grip.

"Aight," Dingledine said, smiling as if both Andre and the FBI bitch had fallen into his trap. "Let's us just go ahead and do that then."

The FBI Agent grabbed Andre's chains. "I'll hold this man right here while you go open that trunk up with your chief," she said to Nimrod, flipping her head to dismiss him.

The chief turned his back and slipped the trunk key into the lock. Officer of the Year Nimrod curled his digits to the first knuckle underneath the trunk's bent lip and prepared to lift. Both Gayle Wright and Andre Turnipseed dropped to the pavement and covered their faces.

"What the fuck are y'all doin?" Nimrod asked, gawking at the two brown people face down on the pavement, as Chief Dingledine twisted the key.

The fiery flash filled Andre's field of vision, followed by a wall of heat and a shock wave that cascaded off the town's churches like Zeus tossing lightning. The reverberation was exponentially amplified by the echoing confines of the surrounding buildings, queuing a cacophonic chorus of flapping pigeon wings and wailing car alarms.

The trunk lid became red-hot shrapnel. Chunks of flaming marijuana arced across the police station parking lot like Chinese fireworks. An eruption of 87 octane Sunoco — advertised to be the cleanest, fastest, hottest burning hydrocarbon in all the Bible Belt — erupted into an impressive Roy G Biv rainbow of hellfire. Bits and pieces of metal rained from the sky.

A tarot card fluttered onto the pavement, landing directly in front of Gayle Wright's nose, face down. She looked at it cross-eyed.

A beautiful branch of Sour Diesel fell to the sky in front of Andre, its buds smoldering like incense. He kissed the rising smoke, sucked it deep into his lungs, not only for the buzz, but to permanently imprint the reality of that particular moment into his memory.

Dingledine was afire. From his gonads up, he was already as crispy as the #4 KFC combo that Gayle had just eaten. Everyone watched the old police chief stumble around aimlessly in the parking lot like that same meal when it was alive, but with its head chopped off. He pulled his pistol and shot aimlessly, murdering the cell phone tower hidden inside the Church of the Nazarene's steeple. Then his pistol clattered to the pavement.

Nimrod, whose shirt was lit up like a July Fourth firework, was engaged in a game of stop, drop and roll, trying desperately to extinguish the fire threatening to eat the skin off his torso.

Andre crawled toward Dingledine's loose pistol with its four unshot rounds.

Nimrod saw Andre going for the gun. As his shirt burned, he managed to pull his weapon and fire it in Andre's general direction, but he only chipped three divots out of the blacktop and punched snake eyes through the loose sleeves of Andre's orange jumpsuit. He hit neither flesh nor bone.

Andre grabbed the chief's .38 and took aim to return fire.

Nimrod jumped to his feet and fled into the police station, screaming, leaving a smoky wake behind.

Andre lowered the pistol without shooting.

Dingledine haunted the parking lot, his arms outstretched, his coattail molten, his badge a hot brand. Toxic fumes emanated from his burning polyester uniform. He looked like a smoldering zombie.

Townsfolk began to appear; Christian townsfolk, wondering who this god or goddess was, who was liberating their community from decades of oppression.

"Serves ya right, motherfucker," the butch FBI Agent said, stepping through the swirling smoke toward the burning chief. She glanced over her shoulder, an impassive observer, as Andre, the shackled, black-skinned inmate gripping the chief's pistol, loped toward the police station where he had business to tend to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

### ONE DOWN

Chief Red Dingledine bellyflopped across an alarm-yelping cruiser's waxed white hood and stared straight into the reflection of the Grim Reaper. He rolled and fell to the pavement, his white shirt sooty, his gray jacket melted black to his skin. When he looked up, the FBI's prize nigger dyke was smiling down at him.

"Howdy Chief," the man-woman said cheerfully. "My name is Officer Gayle Wright. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Anti-Discrimination and Hate Crime Unit." She held a business card out to him as if they were meeting at a law-enforcement convention.

The chief gawked at her brown, moon-round visage, her sparkling white teeth, her genuine smile, and her outstretched business card. His eyes boiled and his jaw ratcheted as if he was attempting to respond.

The butch dyke knelt down beside the old man, dodging his wafts of charred flesh. She laid her business card down on the melted polyester covering the chief's chest. "Maybe you remember my daddy..."

Dingledine's jaw accelerated as if he were speaking, but the only sound was the click of his TMJ. The business card darkened around the edges.

"His name was Officer Ben Wright. The first black officer your daddy ever hired. Killed in the line of duty. After he beat your sorry punk ass for some reason only you and your buddy, what's his name, _Earl Finkter,_ know. And I just want to tell you, your boy Finkter is next on my list. So if you happen to be around, maybe you can let him know. If not, fuck ya both." Then she grinned. "Am I right?"

Gayle Wright leaned into the stench of burning flesh so she could whisper in the man's flame-broiling ear. "You know, sir," she said. "I been waitin a long time for this."

Dingledine stared at the sky. Gayle Wright stood up and gazed around at the growing crowd of locals. She looked down at the old police chief, who was barely breathing. "Maybe you remember the little girl that watched you lyin your ass off in court," she said. "That little girl with the GI Joe."

Dingledine still stared into space.

A flame appeared from a corner of Gayle Wright's business card.

"Can you please tell me one thing, sir?" She leaned over him as if she was going to spit. She didn't. But a salty drop of her bodily fluid landed on Dingledine's charred forehead anyway. "Why'd you do it? Why'd you kill my daddy? He never did nothin to nobody."

A total of six shots muffled by cinderblock walls pounded out a revival preacher's call and response from inside the police station. One bulldog barked from the chief's purloined six-shooter. Three fast poodle yips from Nimrod's standard issue semi-auto, and then two more bulldogs.

Agent Gayle Wright twisted her head toward the racket, waiting for the last bulldog. But it never came. She looked back down at the chief one last time. He was dead. She watched her business card consumed by the flame.

She stepped over his charred body and walked back to the tarot card that had fluttered out of the sky. She squatted on her haunches, reached down, and flipped it over to see what it was.

It was Justice. Of course.

She stood back up, brushed off her thighs, stepped over the card, then turned back around on the far side to take another look at it. Now, from this perspective, it was right side up.

The way it was supposed to be.

# # #

Nimrod was locked in Chief Dingledine's office, in full fear mode, shaking like Parkinsons. He was in the high-power weapons closet, unable to shove his emergency brass key into the shotgun cabinet. His empty Glock lay on the floor, hot from firing all seven of its rounds. A dozen glossy black pump-action 12-gauge Riotmasters stood at attention behind bulletproof plexiglass. They were spit-shined nigger killers, locked and loaded, inches from his fingertips. Nimrod gave up on the key and, with strength he never knew he had, hurled Dingledine's heavy wooden office throne against the plexiglass that separated him from the shotguns.

The chair splintered; its wheels and wooden parts clattered onto the tile floor. Nimrod saw his own panicked reflection in the stubborn plexiglass, and then he saw the ghost behind him, a pitch black apparition in an orange jumpsuit. The ghost — dripping with chains — held the chief's pistol in a double-fisted firing stance. Nimrod realized it was triangulated toward the back of his own head. Before he could turn around, Dingledine's custom pearl handle .38 Smith & Wesson pressed against his medulla.

"What was _you_ doin seventeen years ago, punk?" Andre Turnipseed asked him. "Little League? Paper route? Girl Scout Cookies?"

The pressure of the barrel doubled the trembling cop over. He dropped onto a knee. "Put the gun down," Shannon County's Officer of the Year squeaked as warm liquid drooled down his thigh, pooling underneath his kneecap. "You're under arrest."

"We're gonna get my boy outa your Holiday Inn," Andre said. He pushed Nimrod down with the gun barrel, introducing the cop of the year to the grout. He laid down on Nimrod's spine with a knee. He then displayed the revolver in front of Nimrod's nose, popped its cylinder open, and pumped the extractor to eject the bullets onto the cold floor. They landed like dice. He selected the single that had not yet been shot, stuck it back into the cylinder, spun it, and snapped it shut on a random chamber without looking. "Let's you and me play a little game." He shoved the barrel into the crack of Nimrod's ass, and aimed it at an angle through his fat ass cheek. "Where's the fancy magic key to my boy's cell?"

Nimrod struggled. "I can't tell you that."

Andre pushed the gun barrel deeper into the crack between Nimrod's ample glutes and snapped the hammer.

Click!

"AAAAAGH!"

Andre popped the cylinder open, spun it again and snapped his wrist to click it back on another random cylinder. "I'm gonna ask you over and over til ya tell me, or you get your ass shot off." He pushed the gun barrel against Nimrod's ass cheek again. "Take yer pick."

"Wait— no— don't—"

Click!

"AAAAAAAAAGH! It's a card! A white plastic card! It's in the pocket of my jacket, over there on the rack!"

Before Andre could stand up, he was frozen by the moderately persuasive sound of a shotgun racking. It was steel-on-steel, a metallic ka-chunk with precision hinges, rails and levers that plugged a shell into the firing chamber of a federal government 12-gauge. It was right behind him.

"I'm in charge here, gentlemen." Agent Gayle Wright had her FBI shotgun tucked inside the sweat stain underneath her right breast. Its barrel was staring hungrily at Andre's right kidney. "Slide the pistol over this way, big boy. Chop-chop." She admired the muscular interference pattern on the chained man's neck. It was a crisscross of organic anatomical art and hand-needled India-ink death threats, barely visible black-on-black prison tats. The deeply colored man's anatomy was pure sexual energy, handmade of iron-willed repetition, all natural, no added human growth hormone like the stupid motorcycle cops used in their futile attempts to turn themselves into their flawed image of the ideal man. No, this specimen was made of hard time, years of it. No free range in that package. He was so much hotter now than he was when she first fell in love with him at the wreck site seventeen years before. She loved that shit.

"Cut me a little slack, sweetheart," Andre said over his shoulder, sliding the revolver across the floor toward her. He must have subconsciously picked up on her pheromones.

"I'm takin these two muthafuckas up to Lanta," the big woman with the badge pinned on her tit said to Nimrod. "So why don't you go get me that other one out of the cell, and make sure he's cuffed tight."

Nimrod staggered to his feet and brushed himself off while standing in his own pool of urine.

"By the way, here's my card," the butch Agent said, holding one of her bright white FBI business cards out to Nimrod. He took it in his fingers and held it in front of his face. She waited until his droopy eyes focused. "My name is Gayle Wright, FBI. You got that?"

Nimrod looked her in the eye. "Yeah," he said. "I got it. Gayle Wright, FBI."

"You're lookin at a lady, you got that?"

"Yeah, a lady."

"Good," she said, like a first grade teacher. "Now eat it. Eat that fucking card. Because I got video of you and your Kentucky Fried Chief planting evidence in that Galaxie out there."

"What?"

"You figure it out. When my fam from DC gets here to poke around, you ain't never seen me, nor heard of me, nor nothin, you got that, muthafucka?"

Nimrod appeared to be thinking, but it was gonna take a long time.

"Eat it, muthafucka!" Gayle Wright backhanded Nimrod up side the head. "Eat it! Eat my goddamn business card, you cracka muthafucka!"

Nimrod stuffed Gayle Wright's business card into his mouth like it was the body of Christ, and started chewing.

She kicked him in the nuts with the point of her shoe, doubling him over. "Now go get me that other nigga, boy!" She watched Nimrod shuffle down the hall toward the jail cells, then looked at Andre. She smiled at him like a succubus that was put on earth by Satan to tempt Andre into evil. "One down, one to go," she said. "Ain't that right, boy?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

### JUST ANOTHER DAY ON THE ROAD

"Ah, ahh, AHHHH, ahh, ahhhhhh..." The Reverend JC Pagans sped the Christian duo's tour bus through a country club neighborhood, warming his vocals as he drove. The cedar shake gables, the Masters Tournament grass, the mixed-race lawn jockeys, everything flew past in a suburban blur. He launched the bus over a speed hump at a marginally sub-felonious clip, bending the ear of a DEAF CHILD sign as he roared past.

In the interior rear-view mirror, JC could see Gaia in her back seat hideout, behind her wall of swaying hippie beads. She had a set of studio headphones over her ears, and was dicking around with JC's keyboard. Apparently she was creating a masterpiece, but all JC could hear was the off-key hoarseness of her smoker's vocals, like Janis without the Joplin.

To save gas, JC unplugged the GPS when he saw the steeple. It stood proud, white, and erect, right smack dab in the center of town. He swerved the bus around a traffic circle and hit the parking lot's concrete entrance ramp at an extraordinary velocity.

Gaia's spine was compressed and then wrenched with a twist.

Bama performed his Charlie Chaplin bark on the way up. On the way down, his egghead cracked against a bare metal armrest.

JC busted it diagonally across the lonely parking lot. When he got close to the church, he cranked down on the emergency brake. The old rattletrap skidded to a disgraceful screeching halt, crooked across three parking spaces, directly underneath a sign that said

NO PARKING

VIOLATORS WILL

BE BAPTIZED

He flipped his seat belt loose and shouted over his shoulder. "C'MON GAIA! LET'S GO GO GO! WE ONLY GOT A HALF HOUR TO GET SET UP!"

Gaia pulled her headphones off. She assessed the parking lot. "You said we had this gig booked solid," she said. "There's only eight or nine cars."

JC paused three seconds to look across the vast expanse of blacktop. Gaia was right. It was almost empty. He swallowed, nearly pulling a muscle in his adams apple. "Today's Sunday, isn't it?" He looked at the dashboard clock. "The show is at seven p.m. We're on stage in half an hour, right?"

Little Bama stood up in his box and tried to whine, but only silence came out. His gnarly, death-gray nails desperately clicked on a window.

"Did you reset the clock for daylight savings?"

JC suddenly looked ill. "We're late!" he said. He stuffed his mic stand under the crook of his arm like he was preparing to joust, then strapped his keyboard across his back like a guerrilla's machine gun. He abandoned Gaia and busted across the lot on foot as if chased by demons.

Gaia stumbled behind, hunched over from the weight of her electronic drum kit and the duo's massive studio amp.

The two musicians dashed and loped across the empty parking lot toward the double doors of the church basement.

Once inside, JC's Warriors discovered an audience of seventeen clean-scrubbed pubescent girls in Bible-belt home school attire. They nervously giggled in the second row of fold-out chairs. The first row was empty. So were rows three through all the rest of them.

A trio of their vertically challenged boyfriends sat quietly together in a distant corner of the church basement, nerding out on handheld cyber games.

A few chaperones milled about the rear wall near the church's kitchen. They were parents, and appeared to be wary of the Christian credentials of this weird looking, tardy duo.

The youth pastor ambushed them. He was forty, red faced, borderline furious. "We tried to call you," he chastised, "but all we got was your voice mail."

"Sorry we're late," JC said.

"Most of your audience gave up and went home already," the minister said. "We gave em all a refund. Here's your take of the door." He dribbled thirty pieces of silver into JC's cupped hands. "Your music better be righteous, that's all I gotta say."

JC bounded up the pair of stairs onto the black plywood stage, fired up his amp, and cracked an ear-splitting clap of thunder when he plugged in his keyboard. Gaia struggled up the steps behind him with her drum kit.

The adults passed a roll of industrial brown paper towels down the line. Each of them tore off a strip. They rolled their own earplugs, clotting their canals in preparation for the concert.

JC twisted his volume down low and rehearsed a few riffs on his keyboard. He tossed his curls from time to time whether he needed to or not.

Gaia set up her entire drum kit on her own, then took her seat and rolled every one of her pads to warm up.

JC put his big black foam ball over the church's microphone to hide his sissy teeth behind. "Test test." He was satisfied with the p.a., so he nodded to the angry youth minister, who flipped a switch and darkened the room. JC stood in a fractured spotlight beam from the church's cracked fresnel. "Are you ready!" JC's mic fed the rhetorical question back into his own ears like the shriek of an attacking pterodactyl.

A pair of second-row girls clapped inappropriately. The smart phone boys were slackjawed, completely in awe of the ear-splitting feedback.

JC scrambled to adjust the potentiometers one by one, awkwardly maintaining eye contact with his audience. "I said, are you ready!" and this time three girls clapped. "JC-JC-JC-JC-JC!" JC chanted, attempting to convince his audience to join in with his egotistical, self-indulgent chant. Finally, his forlorn voice trailed off in defeat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced as if in the third person, "the amazing, the one and only, the-"

Gaia overran his vocals with an impressive drum intro, even managing to shoot her husband a near clandestine middle finger and a genuine, neighborly stage smile without missing a beat.

Everyone saw it. Girls applauded as if they had just discovered lesbianism. Chaperones were mortified.

They always played their signature song first: _Jesus Wants Me To Love You._ JC's fingers flew across his keyboard for their consensual rotation of bars, and then there was his nod, and Gaia's dirty look in response. He didn't trust his wife to remember the cue, since she had once missed it. She in turn had made it clear that she despised him for nodding, implying that she was an idiot who couldn't count 4/4, just because she missed one cue two years ago.

What made the song fantastic, in JC's long suffering opinion, was three and a half beats of complete silence that had been inadvertently mastered into their modest CD as a result of a technical failure made by a dumbass studio sound mixing engineer. JC failed to negotiate a refund for the seventeen hundred CDs he had ordered, so he set about convincing Gaia that the brief audio cutout was what made the song perfect. He insisted they exaggerate the silent beats for dramatic tension in their live performances, in an attempt to validate the ugly mistake on their CD.

JC wore his keyboard strapped around his neck like it was a guitar. He strutted around the stage like a dancing Jesus, except with his mouth closed tight. When they came to the suspenseful pause in the song, he lightly fingered some ivories to add a layer of texture to the cultish chant. He inspected the inside of his eyelids, as if serene in the knowledge that Jesus would be the band's metronome. Gaia hammered the return syllable in perfect time with JC's lead vocals. The two still had the accuracy of a simultaneous orgasm, although they hadn't shared a plywood bunk in the back of their tour bus in over two months.

"Jesus wants me to love you," JC sang to the underage girls.

The lasses relentlessly fondled the gold crosses that were chained around their fair throats as if their clitorises had been relocated.

"Jesus wants you to love me, too..."

Gaia switched her drum kit to soft-shoe as JC keyed a bass G sample to resonate across the next line.

"When I'm in your bed, with Ga-a-a-a-awd above us..."

JC bent the note with his keyboard's funk wheel, a contentious dick move that Gaia hated. "Then I don't wa-a-a-a-ant to make a boo-boo..."

The girls in the front row were entranced by JC's rhythmic pelvis as he dropped to his knees in front of them, masturbating his keyboard. The gory, Chinese-made golden plastic crucifix on his belt buckle glinted in time with the beat, hypnotizing the young virgins with its gyrations. The girls fanned their moist, flushing faces with cardboard photos of Cold War Jesus stapled onto white pine tongue depressors.

JC loved imagining how, in only a couple of short hours, these downy pubed beauties would be naked, spread-eagled on their 900-thread-count white percale, freshly starched by their illegal Mexican immigrant worker cleaning ladies. Each of those girls will have bought a CD, and each of them would have their JC's Warriors CD liner open to JC's own seriously sexy chest-hair shot, and each of them would have his voice french-kissing their ear canals through rubber earplugs, and each of them would be in heaven, with JC, exactly where they should be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

### GOOD FRIDAY

Refrigerated rosebuds, common hyacinth and cut-rate carnation decorated the Floris-Pale Funeral Home. The flowers were so cheap, an artificial floral scent that was made in China and pressure-packed into spray cans had to be puffed into the atmosphere by cleverly hidden robotic bathroom spritzers. No telling what kind of shit they were breathing in that place.

Earl Finkter focused his sole eye on the lavishly powdered countenance of his old best buddy, Chief Red Dingledine. Red had been overinflated by the undertaker and shoe-horned into an eternal tin can that was half a size too cheap to hold his lavish corpulence. The dead cop was decked out in his finest dress blues, which had been hanging in his closet for forty years, so he didn't have to buy anything for his funeral. His body was arranged in a final repose, laying on a bed of skimpy nylon stretched over mid-grade foam. The entire display was bathed in a dim, buttery light to mask the economical selections.

Finkter figured Red's ex-wife Sugarplum must have made the arrangements, since Red had no other family except his twin boys and the retard. His twins were worthless — both of them were in prison for doing something stupid and then getting caught for it. The retard was smarter than both of them twins combined, but even he needed round-the-clock supervision. Didn't no cousins want to have anything to do with him, especially now that he was dead. No doubt that junkyard momma was getting a lump sum from the insurance company and some sort of police pension, so of course she wanted to make as big a profit as she could.

With his stressed-out eyeball bulging in time to the thump of his heartbeat, Finkter gazed at his Adonis lying in the casket. He attempted to conjure adolescent memories of his young boyfriend, his lover, now hidden behind the mask of an old man, a burnt up old man doctored up with cosmetics. His flame-broiled jowls were puffed out with cotton, his scorched lips and eyelids were sutured into their correct positions, and the gigantic burn wound in the crown of his skull was camouflaged by a poorly fitting _alibaba.com_ toupee.

But Finkter didn't notice any of that. No, Finkter's gaze was focused on the crease in the right corner of the old dead man's mouth. It was focused on the devilish crescent moon, the scar in the shape of a number six trout hook, the disfigurement that proved as permanent as a bad tattoo, still split into the skin despite forty-seven years of nearly unwavering heterosexuality.

# # #

All the underage smoking and drinking, the swimming hole, the cherry bombs, the busted mailboxes in niggertown, sleeping out under the summer stars and prowling the depths of shadowy streets in late night adventures...back then they thought their youth would never end.

The two boys, all of fifteen years, had rope-swung from the riverbank into the muddy water, first clothed, then shirtless, then in their underbritches, and finally naked, skinny dipping, innocent and vulnerable. They scurried down the slippery bank for speed, intent on perfecting the pendulum gainer. They belly-flopped their near misses in the immortal serpentine current.

And nobody never ever saw them, nobody in their private place.

Their sidelong glances at each other became more frequent. Their eye contact became increasingly prolonged. Finally, they simply stared into each others' souls while standing face to face, erection to erection, breathless, aroused, naked.

Young Earl Finkter, so full of life, knelt on his knees and cradled Red Dingledine's sensitive penis in his soft palms. It had a handsome curve when it was engorged. He enveloped it with his warm saliva. It was so deliciously wrong. Yet neither boy could stop themselves any more than they could stop the river.

Saliva, semen, spit, giggle, guffaw, kiss, kiss full on the lips, french kiss. Rinse, repeat.

Each and every day, the two boys experimented. They took turns being the girl. Kissing, blowjobs, and finally, when they got the courage, right up the ass. It didn't matter. They were simply helping each other rehearse for the day when they would have an opportunity to lose their virginity with a real female, to have actual sex.

They weren't homosexuals. They were just practicing.

And that warm summer afternoon, the rookie cop, the goddamn nigger, Officer Ben Wright, beat them about the head, spine and ribcage until they cowered in the fetal position, naked, yelling _stop, stop, stop,_ while the officer thrashed them with his black stick. The cop beat them with his baton, raising purple welts on their thighs, shins and temples. He inflicted coagulating bruises across their buttocks. He whipped dark guilt spots into their forearms, forearms that were raised in defense and supplication for mercy.

"They's homa-sekshuls, sir!" The negro officer shouted.

The boys could hear the wheeze of the senior Police Chief Elmer Dingledine, young Red's father. The old man blazed a trail through the virgin undergrowth, his progress slowed by briars. He was unaware the screams he heard were from his own son and his own son's best friend.

"What did you say, boy?" The ambitious black officer held his billy club high over his own head, like Thor in anticipation of the next blow on the anvil.

"Nothin, sir," Red Dingledine said. "I just said stop, please stop."

"You said _daddy._ "

The young cop swung his stick, drawing blood from the curve of a canine as it gouged through the right corner of Red Dingledine's mouth, the erotic mouth, the offending mouth. It was the humiliating scar that remained for the rest of Red's life, the one that was still scrawled into his corpse like a scrimshaw carving when his life was over.

"I didn't say _daddy,_ " Red said, catching his blood in the palm of his hands. "Stop hitting me, please stop hitting me!"

Chief Elmer Dingledine finally arrived, pink faced, out of breath, huffing from the run. He was startled by the sight of his naked, beaten son and his son's best friend. He saw their immature pubic thatches, silky as bunny rabbits, and their all-over tans, like they had spent all summer naked in the sun.

"They's homa-seckshuls, sir. We gotta take em in and lock em up!"

Earl Finkter remembered how he'd tried to crawl toward the river, and how Officer Wright raised his black stick again, and how Red's father quietly commanded Officer Wright to stop. "Put your baton down, officer," the old man had said.

"But they's homa-seckshuls, Chief," the negro officer said. "I seen em!"

"You _seen_ em?"

"Yessir, I _seen_ em. _This_ one was fuckin _that_ one, sir." The nigger cop pointed first at Red, then at Earl.

" _This_ one was fuckin _that_ one?"

"Yas, suh. I seen it with my own eyes. I'll testify to that in court."

Chief Elmer Dingledine stared at the young black police officer. Everyone in town had heard about the first nigger they were forced to hire because of the goddamn Supreme Court. So now to prove himself, this coon's gotta be an ultra-enthusiastic upholder of the law, devout in his pursuit of justice. He had yet to be humiliated in the courtroom by clever attorneys, to be chastised by idiot judges in their smelly robes, and to fall prey to casual propositions by the speeding town temptress in her droptop Mustang.

" _Daddy?"_

The senior Chief Dingledine popped his pearl-handled revolver loose from its holster.

" _Make him stop, Daddy."_

"They's just homa-seckshuls, sir, I can take care of em." Officer Wright gulped as Chief Elmer Dingledine took aim. "You don't have to shoot em, sir, they's just little faggots."

The young black officer's blood gushed from his throat, his belly and breast before the echoes somersaulted off the Georgia hills and tripled the volume of the initial three bursts. The two naked boys watched their homophobic assailant grip his throat, gurgle, and drop to his knees.

The young, naked Red Dingledine scrambled to get out of the way as the black officer's body fell past him, landing at an awkward angle against the hollow trunk of a rotten tulip poplar. The old man's voice sounded calm even though his pistol was shivering like it was wintertime. "Red," the senior Chief Dingledine said, "get your ass over here, boy."

"What, Daddy? What do you want?" Red must have thought his daddy was going to shoot him next.

"I said get the fuck over here, boy."

Young Red Dingledine picked up his shorts, his tighty whities and t-shirt.

"Git yer ass over here now boy!"

Red hung his head and trudged over to his father, clutching his clothes. A roundhouse snapped the boy's head backwards. The father's punch bloodied Red's nose, knocking the boy naked into a briar patch.

Finkter remembered how the old man turned his pistol around in his hand, gripping the barrel, and held it outstretched. " _You_ ," he said, holding the butt of the gun toward the other naked boy. "Come here now."

"Me?" young Earl Finkter had said.

"Yeah, _you._ Take holda this pistol, boy."

Earl Finkter stood, brushed the brambles off his bare ass, and picked his way over thorny vines in his bare feet, making his way toward Red's father. The head of his pubic bud hid like a frightened turtle in its shell. He approached the old police chief with as much bravery as he could muster.

"Take it!" Red's father shook the pistol in front of young Earl Finkter's face. "Take the gun, boy!"

The naked boy, Earl Finkter, wrapped his thumb and four fingers around the pearl handle, avoiding the trigger.

"How old are you, boy?"

"Fifteen."

"Aight then, I'm gonna tell both you boys right now," Red's old man said, "I ain't takin no heat for your sorry faggot asses, neither one of ya. Ya oughta be ashamed of yerselves. You'd'a never lived this story down once a nigger got ahold of it." He pointed his forefinger toward the dead cop, who was lying in an unusually twisted yoga position, his spine wedged against a branch of the decayed poplar, his pupils half visible underneath lifeless eyelids. "You'll get out when you turn eighteen and that'll be that."

"Whaddaya want me to do, Chief Dingledine?"

"Shoot him, boy," the old man said. "Shoot him ya little faggot, shoot him like a man! He's dead already so what the fuck does it matter?"

Young, naked Earl Finkter turned around toward the dead cop, the pistol in his hand, but no finger on the trigger.

The old police chief, Red's father, boxed Earl Finkter's ears, walloping the boy with open-palm roundhouses. "Shoot him boy!"

Earl Finkter tried to dodge Red's father's punches, but most of them landed.

" _SHOOT HIM, GODDAMMIT!"_

Earl Finkter aimed his best friend's father's pearl handled .38 at the dead man, turned his head away, and slowly squeezed the pistol's trigger. The pistol's hammer drew back. The dead cop's body burped, hiccupped, or spasmed, nobody really knew, it just did some reflex action, just before fire shot from the barrel and the hills erupted with echoes again.

Young Red Dingledine turned away and puked.

Young Earl Finkter dropped the pistol, collapsed, and wept.

The old police chief noticed an antique flat bottom bass boat floating lazily down the river. A pair of arcing monofilaments were flaccid in the water, and two full grown negro men were silently blinking at the scene.

The police chief drilled holes through the two men with his own eyeballs until they floated past without a word. "They saw it was me," the old police chief said to the boys. "They ain't gonna say shit to nobody."

# # #

In the Floris-Pale Funeral Home, Finkter still gazed at his friend's corpse, his thoughts lost in the past. He could have been staring for thirty seconds or thirty minutes. He had no idea.

But he did know full well that an arguably innocent nigger had been set free by the State of Georgia after seventeen years in the big house. He knew the State Police were investigating, and their report hadn't been released yet. But he also knew that the nigger may be somewhat understandably partaking of revenge, starting with a booby trap in that old crazy car's trunk. And he knew that if this was true, then he himself was gonna be next on that nigger's shit list.

As he stared at Red Dingledine's dead body, an icy hand violated his shoulder. He was sure it was Death, come to take him. He spun, fear in his eye. His snub nose derringer, sweaty in his palm, fired twice into the ceiling without any intention to do so. It was as if the little gun suddenly shot completely of its volition.

"Oh Jayzus!" Sugarplum Dingledine screamed. She had managed to squeeze on some denim trousers for the solemn occasion, but she had still worn her sexy halter top to the funeral home because she never missed an opportunity to show off her bazookas, just in case a passing billionaire would be smitten by the sight and propose on the spot. She rolled her eyes into the purple interior of her skull, sharted, and fainted. Finkter attempted to stop her fall by grabbing her halter. When a single nipple slipped out like a cockroach racing for its life, he recoiled in horror, released his grip, and watched helplessly as the beast of the junkyard slapped down onto the commercial carpet.

A retard ran out of the men's room with his pants unbuckled and unzipped. His long brown hair flew behind him as he ran down to Sugarplum. "What the fuck you do to my momma?" he screamed, kneeling beside his mother. "Momma! Momma! Wake up!" The boy slapped his mother's cheeks like he'd seen on television. " _What the fuck you do to my momma?_ " The arteries in his neck appeared to be under tremendous pressure. His tramp stamp peered out above his butt crack.

Officer of the Year Purvis Q Nimrod, still snaggletoothed, still slightly bent over his testicles, still stitched and puffy around his lips, still bruised purple in the middle of his forehead, had been milling about the rear of the chapel with three other lily white uniformed county police officers who were only there to collect their time-and-a-half pay for pallbearing.

But Nimrod was a cop's cop. He knew how to instantly piece clues together to form a crime scene narrative. When the two gunshots rang out from Finkter's derringer, Nimrod looked over and witnessed the pistol-wielding stranger attacking Sugarplum Dingledine — the grieving ex-wife and rumored heir to the moderate Dingledine estate. He heard the shots and saw the big woman fall. He heard her large body slap to the ground. What other conclusion could he draw from the evidence? He snatched his Glock from its holster, racked it, and took aim.

The other three cops followed suit alongside him.

"Kill him!" shouted the retard from his knees the floor. "He shot my momma! Kill the muthafucka!"

"Don't shoot!" Earl Finkter held his hands high, still gripping his derringer. "I'm Earl Finkter, the chief's best friend!" He wasn't sure he was explaining himself properly. "Me and Red, we was friends from being kids together!" He motioned back and forth between himself and the dead man in the casket. "I didn't shoot no one. The lady just fainted. She needs some help."

"Drop your weapon!"

Finkter tossed the derringer, which clattered into the nearby pews. "I didn't mean to shoot," he said. "But I thought she was the nigger come to get me!"

"Kill him! Kill him now!" The retard's unzipped pants were wet in the crotch.

"How in the hell would you think she was the nigger?" Nimrod's eyes narrowed. His lip stitches grew taut. Tiny blue donuts bulged around the catgut piercing his skin. He kept his Glock aimed with both arms outstretched. "What do you know about that nigger anyway?"

At that moment, a whitewashed ex-Greyhound bus rolled up to the commercial glass doors in the front of the funeral home. It was retrofitted with horizontal steel slats that had been spot welded across its windows. Its racing dog logo had been sprayed over and replaced with stenciled letters that read GEORGIA STATE CORRECTIONS. Its air brakes exhaled an exasperated sigh, and its engine produced a high-octane backfire. It was a hellacious _BANG_ , a carbon expulsion of such force that it persuaded Finkter to hit the deck, Nimrod to unload his Glock, and the other three cops to fusillade alongside him.

Twenty-eight rounds tore through the blue-collar funeral chapel in a fraction of a second, as fast as Nimrod and his three cop buddies could squeeze triggers. When the explosions subsided, there was still the sound of four empty Glocks repetitively clicking in four cops' hands.

The retard shrieked and threw his moist crotch across his mother's nose to protect her.

Finkter sought cover behind Sugarplum's quivering corpulence with the skinny retard laying over top of her. The junkyard duo proved adequate for shielding Finkter's noodly parts, although he did suffer an inconvenient glancing laceration across the outermost curve of his left buttock.

Seventeen rounds punctured the chief's coffin. One dinged the brass crucifix on the altar, spinning Jesus around a palm nail like a busted propeller on a Piper Cub. Another ricocheted until it gradually lost kinetic energy and wedged itself between two organ keys — one white, the other black — filling the gunpowder scented atmosphere with an otherworldly vibrato reminiscent of a drowning smoke detector. Then the little bullet popped out like the two keys had spit it onto the floor.

The awkward silence that followed was perforated by the erratic squeak of propeller Jesus, winding down to a landing on the brass crucifix.

Finkter, still cowering on the floor, began to sense a glutinous recipe of formaldehyde, lymphatic ooze and leftover pus drooling into his ear canal from the deflating corpse.

"Hold yer fire!" Sugarplum Dingledine managed to shout from her ghostly white countenance underneath her son's wet junk. She sat up. "It's alright, he's a friend of....of...he's a friend of...of... _Red's,_ " and then she commando-crawled across the floor to melodramatically hug the casket cart's black rubber wheels while blubbering. She dragged herself to her knees, pulled herself upright, reached into the casket and seized her dead ex-husband's lapels. "I hate you, motherfucker!" she wailed while shaking him so hard, she fell backwards. The old, skinny uniform tore loose in her hands, revealing itself to have been scissored into sections by the Asian ladies in the back room of the funeral home, so a facade could be faked over the chief's aged bulk.

The retard pointed an accusatory finger at Finkter. "I'm gonna fuck you up!"

"Shut up, Rupert!"

Finkter stumbled to his feet and dabbed his bleeding ass with a leftover horsey-sauce-enhanced Arby's napkin from his breast pocket.

"Is everyone okay?" Nimrod shouted, his voice trembling as he succeeded in holstering his weapon on the sixth try. Then he made grand arm motions to his crew, eyeball to eyeball with all three of them, "Shannon County Officers listen up! No official reports on this incident, I repeat, no reports on this incident! Got that?" He glared at each one in turn. "It's what _he_ would have wanted." Nimrod nodded toward the corpse. "Now holster your weapons."

The Vietnamese undertaker timidly peeked into the chapel from his office doorway. He appeared to be mentally calculating the profit from a casket up-sale, but he was no doubt disappointed in his shrinking future opportunity to unload his cut-rate mortuary to a wealthy Chinese death-disposal corporation for a hundred million yuan.

Sugarplum Dingledine looked up from the casket toward the front door of the funeral home. Her haunting howl ramped up like an air-raid klaxon. "It's yer brothers, Rupert!"

Two shotgun-wielding prison guards, the first a handsome but small-framed compulsive toothpick chewer in golden rimmed Ray-Bans, and the second, a chunky white female with a mottled complexion and sparkle-free, life-dulled eyes, burst through the chapel's double doors with a flourish stillborn from the despair of cursed jingling chain, aborted felony and shotgun-racking. Their chests were both thrust forward like the Texas Rangers who escorted Lee Harvey Oswald to his assassination. They flanked a pair of orange-suited pale white boys, chubby and chained about the ankles, wrists and waists. One of the boys had a wicked limp.

Rex Dingledine was the second-born, a once-identical brother, who, by virtue of an unfortunate hunting accident involving his twin's twitchy digit when the boys were ten years old, had endured seventeen hospitalized months of gruesome transfusion, graft and surgery dedicated to removal and repair of blasted bits of hip and thigh bone. This aesculapian adventure unfortunately coincided with an annoying Pig Latin fad that swept through Shannon County Elementary School. As a result, young Rex ended up permanently embossed with the affectionate moniker "Ex-Ray," in honor of his incessant hospital surgeries, as well as his permanent dependence on a solo orthopedic clodhopper, to compensate for the fragments of his skeleton that were abandoned in the disfigured bark of an anonymous pine in the wilds of the Chattahoochee National Forest. (Immediately after the tragic accident, the stupid turkey the twin boys had been trying to shoot simply clucked and flew away like an asshole.)

One day the chief surgeon canceled an operation that was supposed to cure the boy. He summoned Red and Sugarplum Dingledine to come take a look at their son. The boy was lying in a stainless steel tray in the operating room, fully conscious and clad only in a hospital gown like he was a med school cadaver.

Red showed up in his full dress-up police uniform, the very same one he was eventually buried in.

Sugarplum wore her usual faded pink cotton housewife's sack with barely discernible floral patterns, because it was before her liberation, and also, she was pregnant with the retard.

The doctor held the boy's two legs together like he was a grasshopper he'd caught in an alfalfa field, a grasshopper with one leg six inches shorter than the other. "We ain't doin no more operations on this boy," the doctor said. "This is the best we can do."

Red exhibited a stoic countenance.

Sugarplum bit a knuckle on her forefinger like it was a hard peanut from the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, and squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't break down.

Ex-Ray twisted his head to the side and stared at the distorted reflection of his pained face in the side of the stainless steel pan, so as to not reveal any emotion.

"What do we do now?" Red Dingledine asked.

"Special shoes," the doctor said.

Skip-Skip-Clomp. Skip-Skip-Clomp. Skip-Skip-Clomp.

The prison guards took stances inside the doorway and allowed the two chained cons to shuffle toward the guest book podium. When the two inmates arrived, they struggled against each other for initial possession of the FRANKLIN FUNERAL HOME plastic tchotchke quill. Eventually they took turns signing in, under the rules of the permanent pecking order determined at the very moment of their births.

"Ray Dingledine, Inmate 529877, Aberdeen State Correctional Facility"

Following his older twin's lead, the other one signed:

"Rex Dingledine, Inmate 529878, " " " " ." He used hatch marks to indicate a repetition of his brother's writing on the line above, since he didn't have much of a way with words himself.

"Oh my boys, my boys, my boys," Sugarplum cried, her fat white arms outstretched from the spandex mourning sack cradling her bosom. She reached for the hems of their orange garments as if they were deity. But her hug attempt was blocked by the strong, authoritative interference of Prison Escort Guard Ray-Ban, who dropped his athletic forearm like a tollbooth gate and stared the pseudo-widow down with a pointed toothpick jabbed into the left crack of his smirk.

"Keep yer distance," the prison guard uttered.

"It's alright, Momma, it's alright, it's alright," the two overgrown boys repetitively mumbled in the round.

"I'm gonna fuck you up!" Rupert shouted at the guard who crossed his momma.

"Shut up, Rupert," the two prisoners and their mom chorused.

The inmate twin brothers, chained together as if they had just gotten married, shuffled down the funeral home aisle past rows of vacant pews, walking toward their father's casket, while the two shotgun-wielding guards served as their wedding train. Sugarplum daubed her eyes with the white lace underbritches that she had mistaken in the predawn hours for her fancy formal hanky, despite its elongated elastic waistband and auburn skid mark.

"What the fuck happened to Daddy's casket?" asked Ray, the smarter, older, more handsome one, as he reviewed the array of leaking bullet holes punched through its side.

"Yeah, what the fuck happened to Daddy's casket?" parroted Rex — the one they called Ex-Ray — twice as loud.

"We had a minor misunderstanding." Officer Nimrod said. "But everything is okay now."

Ray and Ex-Ray hung their heads in a show of solemnity. They scooted and skip-clomped in shackled baby steps to their father's bullet-holed casket as if their underpants had fallen to their ankles, and gazed awestruck at their dad's deflating corpse.

"Eye-cray," Ray whispered, poking his elbow into Ex-Ray's ribs. Ray screwed up his face, tried his best to sob, looked imploringly at the stone-faced female shotgun, who he thought looked like a masculine version of Deputy Dawg. "Can't you take these chains off a grievin son, ma'am?"

"Yeah, take them chains off my brothers!" Rupert the retard shouted.

The male prison guard, Ray-Ban, twirled his toothpick with his tongue. He migrated his little wooden lick-splinter to the right side of his mouth so he could speak out the left. "We got our orders."

"Yeah, we got our orders." said his Thunder Thighs partner, casually shifting her shotgun into the crook of her arm.

Ray auditioned for an Academy Award, dropping to his knees. "Oh, puh-leeze let us out of these chains! Jus fer our daddy's funeral, that's all!"

Ex-Ray joined his brother in supplication. "We jus here fer daddy's funeral. We only got six more years left on our time. We ain't gonna try nothin." And then seeing no flicker of softening, he swept his arm to introduce the four Shannon County police officers who had gathered around the drama. "Look, we can't do nothin, look at all these officers." And then sensing no crack in the armor, "you gonna just leave us chained up like this after some nigger done kilt our daddy?"

"Yeah, you gonna leave them—"

"Shut up, Rupert."

Habitual toothpick chewing nearly made Ray-Ban appear thoughtful. "We got our orders," was all he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

### CAVALRY HILL

Chief Red Dingledine's funeral procession consisted of his hearse, the funeral home's Widow Limo, two of the three operable county police cars, the fire chief, a volunteer ambulance, the lumbering State Penitentiary transport bus, three jalopies filled with members from the local Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan, and two private Chevies driven by gullible grease monkeys who had both been promised inheritance rights to Red's elaborate collection of SAE Snap-On sockets. The town mayor signed in at the funeral home but surreptitiously peeled off on the way to the graveyard.

Sugarplum enjoyed her first-ever chauffeured limo ride, sipping junkyard moonshine from a quart Mason jar. The procession snaked through the gates of the Cavalry Hill Cemetery, an embarrassingly named graveyard that all out-of-towners assumed was a hillbilly misspelling, but was actually known to be haunted by an entire regiment of drunken yankees, who were all shot dead, right off the backs of their horses, on that very hill, by patriots in the First War Of Southern Independence.

Despite a two-month dry spell, the cemetery lawn around the chief's grave was soaked to mud like a giant sopping diaper, allegedly due to the incompetent gravedigger's inadequate comprehension of electronic sprinkler timers. But everyone knew the gravedigger was lazy, and wet mud was easier than dry dirt to stick a shovel into.

Earl Finkter helped Sugarplum navigate the muck. Each step sucked at the soles of her flip-flops like a soiled toilet plunger. Nimrod and the three other uniforms stood at attention behind the hearse, awaiting pallbearing duty. The prison guards led the two orange-suited Dingledine twins, still shuffling in their chains, to the front of the pallbearer line.

A pimple-faced middle school boy scampered through the cemetery like a leprechaun who was late for St Patrick's Day. He toted bagpipes and wore gangrenous plaid knee socks and golden plastic cufflinks. He had a tartan kilt wrapped around his waist like a bath towel. He ducked behind a dilapidated crypt a dozen or so coffin-lengths from the chief's gathering.

The male prison guard, resting on bent haunch, chewed pine while surveying the ceremony from behind his Ray-Bans. The pair of prison-issue shotguns were mounted to his thighs like bronze penises erect to a sky deity.

The chunky, mottle-faced female guard produced a jumbo ring of timeworn jailer's keys and rifled through them. Ray and Ex-Ray reflexively oscillated their orange clad knees with eager anticipation as the prison guardess attempted key after key, until she had tried them all. "We ain't got the key, Delbert."

"Try em again!" the twin brothers chimed in unison.

"Yeah, try em again goddammit!" shouted Rupert.

"Go ahead and try em again," Guard Ray-Ban said.

A poorly recorded dirge warbled around the gravestones like an uninvited guest. It was a distorted mp3 that the cross-dressing schoolboy had torrented especially for the occasion. He bluetoothed the song from his cracked-screen iPhone to an overmodulated Chinese speaker. It sounded like a worn-out 8-track. The lad emerged from behind his crypt in his tartan stripper outfit and mimed the funeral march with his prop bagpipes.

Sugarplum wiped her glistening nostrils with her lace underbritches.

"We gotta pallbear our daddy," Ray pleaded, exaggerating a sad-dog face while elbowing his brother's ribs.

"Yeah, we gotta pallbear our daddy," repeated Ex-Ray, much louder.

"They gotta pallbear our daddy!" Rupert shouted. "Hey! How come I don't get to pallbear my daddy like they do?"

"Let my boys pallbear their daddy!" the widow wailed. "Except Rupert, he'll fuck it up."

The quadruple-barreled guard displayed the pair of state-issue shotguns like a formidable flying-V. He nodded an okay to his compatriot.

By the third repeat of the hideous bagpipe track, the female jailer had finally unlocked the two brothers' wrists and waists, but she was still exploring for the ankle keys. She paused and looked each of them in the eye before trying the last key on the ring. "Now y'all don't try nothin, y'hear?"

"We jus wanna pallbear our daddy," Ray sucker-sniffed.

"Yeah, we-"

Ray poked an elbow into his twin brother's rib cage, shutting him up.

"They jus wanna-"

"Shut the fuck _up_ , Rupert!"

The plus-size female guard knelt to a knee, stretching the stripes running down the side of her state issue polyester pants with such brute cellulitic force, they squeaked a warning, threatening to bust open at the seams all down her thighs. She tried the keys in rotation a fourth time, and finally succeeded in fully unshackling the two grown boys. "Enjoy your ten minutes of freedom while you pallbear your daddy," she said, "and don't try nothin stupid."

The boys flexed their raw wrists like gosling wings. Their expressions flickered something other than grief. Their eyes darted toward one another in a silent, practiced, plotted, and genetically modified code. It was a visual language between twins that only twins could understand.

What those eyes said was, _the only thing separating us from roaming Shannon County as completely free fugitives is two orange nylon jumpsuits, four twelve-gauge buckshot rounds, and whatever bullets the local cops still had in their pistols, provided they had the balls to shoot up the dead police chief's twin boys._

The two faithful sons took their places of honor on each side of the casket, at the head of the otherwise-constabulary pallbearing parade.

An elderly funeral home employee, who looked like he was minutes from death himself, rolled the old man's casket out of the hearse, revealing strips of patriotic red, white and blue duct tape that concealed the unfortunate bullet holes.

The six men gripped the casket rails and tested the weight in their hands. Sugarplum wailed like a coyote, using her mistaken underbritches like Kleenex. She smeared tears and snot across her tan foundation before regaining her composure and smiling at the Baptist reverend.

Ray and Ex-Ray gripped the coffin handles and led the pallbearers in their solemn march from the hearse toward Red Dingledine's freshly dug grave, the structural integrity of which was in doubt due to its unnatural saturation. Chunks of sludge were slipping from the sides, plopping into a sopping pool of muddy floodwater a foot deep in the bottom of the hole.

Ray's expression of grief was dramatically remarkable. He cleared his throat loudly several times between false sobs as a signal to his stupid, formerly identical twin, and when Ex-Ray finally noticed, he belatedly joined his brother in the grieving act.

The two orange-suited felons led the four police officer pallbearers. They carried Chief Red Dingledine's coffin over the yawn of the grave, which was protected only by a trio of woven nylon bands stretched across its open mouth.

As the recorded bagpipe dirge launched into its fifth resurrection, nobody except the two brothers noticed the catshit-stained 1972 Pinto in the distant ditch. It was a dented, lemon-flavored rust-bucket, idling on the roadside just beyond the cast iron spikes of the cemetery's antique fence.

With a nod perceptible only from one twin to another, Ray and Ex-Ray simultaneously ditched their daddy's bullet-defiled casket into the depths of its muddy grave hole. They shoved it head-first, down between the woven nylon bands. It clumped into the filthy pit like a dump truck careening off an interstate overpass.

Both boys took off running headlong through the cemetery toward the Pinto. Ray flew away in an all-out gold medal sprint. He dodged headstones like a white-faced Kenyan Olympian. Ex-Ray, on the other hand, brought up the rear. He skip-skip-clumped across the grave humps like a musket-shot confederate soldier deserting the Third Battle of Bull Run.

The dyke prison guard snatched her shotgun from her partner and took aim at the brother in the lead, the brother without the limp, Ray, the firstborn, the favorite son.

Sugarplum screamed the primal cry of a protective simian mother, an hysterical shriek which threatened to ruin the sanctity of the service.

Chubster Guard Sheila took direct aim at the elder Ray's lower vertebrae and fired. She pulled the trigger once, then twice, because that's what she had been taught in training. She felled the grown boy like he was a twelve-point buck in the Chattahoochie National Forest. The explosion of gunfire was followed by a moment of silence, broken only by the rolling echo and the racket of the tart-tartaned kid's ghetto blaster, which was now inexplicably blaring Tupac's _When I Get Free._ The rap track blared through the cemetery, its vulgar lyrics illustrating Ex-Ray's hip-hopping escape like an exaggerated movie soundtrack, as the runaway gimp skip-skip-clumped across the graves in his single prescription elevator.

" _When I get free, muthafuckas better watch they ass!"_

Sugarplum abandoned her unique handkerchief and raced to her downed baby's side, weeping.

"Shoot im!" Sheila shouted to Ray-Ban, pointing at the other fleeing inmate.

Ray-Ban stood up, spit his toothpick onto the ground, took aim and chickened out. "I can't shoot no cripple in tha back!"

Sheila turned to Nimrod and the other stunned local police officers. "Shoot im!"

"We're empty!" Nimrod said. The other three Shannon County Police Officers offered shit-eating grins as if they no speaka de ingles.

"Shoot im!" Sheila shouted back to Ray-Ban again.

Ray-Ban took nervous aim, gulped.

"Nooooooooo!" shouted Widow Dingledine.

"I'm gonna fuck you up!" Rupert flew like the wind from out of nowhere. He tackled the sunglassed toothpick chewer, sending them both into the abyss of the grave. They landed akimbo atop the tilted casket and slid into the muck as an aerial two-barrel salute blasted from Ray-Ban's shotgun and punctured a cloud that looked like freedom.

Ex-Ray Dingledine dove head-first through the open passenger window of the decrepit yellow Pinto. His carotid got hooked like a fish on a sharp metallic edge reaching out from the car's loosy-goosy center console shift lever. His wattle was stretched to near bursting. His lips and tongue kissed a borderline of burly blonde thigh hair. It was a hirsute Maginot line, the northernmost extent of Candy Methe's devotion to the fine art of personal grooming.

"Go! Go!"

"Whar's Ray?"

"He's dead! They shot him! Didn't cha see? Go!"

"They _shot_ him?" Her chin trembled. "But I done bought all _this!_ " She waved her hands to highlight her pink Big Lots baby doll lingerie, her crimson pedicure, and her fuzzy, powder blue bunny slippers.

Ex-Ray kicked his legs, which were still hanging outside the Pinto's passenger window. He tried desperately to inchworm his way inside, but there was so little room to maneuver. His nose crept toward Candy's cootchie as his clodhopper flailed in the air over the cemetery ditch.

"We can't go without Ray!" Candy Methe said, a tear forming in the corner of her right eye. Then she saw four local county cops and one female penitentiary guard racing on foot toward her Pinto. Her glutes sharted a pulpy mixture.

Ex-Ray inhaled an erotic whiff of country girl crotch fear as Candy twisted the key. The aged Pinto's starter erupted with a piercing metallic complaint since the engine was already idling. She floored the gas pedal until the power plant was about to explode, but the car just sat there. A couple of the local cops grabbed Ex-Ray by his feet and started pulling. But Ex-Ray hugged Candy's half-shaved thigh like she was his savior goddess. Everyone played tug of war.

Candy slapped the Pinto into D, pinching Ex-Ray's wattle with the shifter. Then she spun gravel with her baldest tire.

Ex-Ray screamed with pain as his pinched wattle was stretched on the rack, tortured and abused. He held tighter to Candy, strangling both of her thighs while dragging three of the clinging cops down the dusty roadside alongside the accelerating Pinto. He bucked the determined officers, kicking like a bronco with a bungee cord Indian-burning his balls. One by one the cops lost grip and fell to the roadside. The final one flopped into the dirt clutching Ex-Ray's prized prescription oxford.

"Goddamn those motherfuckers!" Ex-Ray released his wattle from the rat trap, then pulled his mismatched legs into the old beater as Candy kept it floored past 30, 40, and finally, after topping Cemetery Hill and heading down the back side where all the niggers were buried, reaching a full 50 miles an hour.

She blasted through the Shannon County Elementary School Zone like a Singer sewing machine high on crystal. "I come to git Ray, not you, asshole!"

"Well I am so goddamn sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted, Miss Candy." Ex-Ray peered into the dust cloud behind the Pinto. "We better ditch this car quick."

"I took the plates off it," Candy said. "They'll never know who we are."

Ex-Ray considered Candy's logic as he examined the subtly dyed shades of her old school frizzy blonde shag.

She skidded onto the county road descending into the floodplain, and floored it toward the raised railroad tracks perpendicular to their direction of travel. A roaring locomotive paced them toward the intersection, dragging a mile of butane behind. The red warning lights blinked ahead. The black-and-white striped crossing gates lowered across their path to the sound of clanging bells.

"I ever tell you how purty you are, Candy Methe?"

"I ever tell you to shut the fuck up, Ex-Ray Dingledine?"

"I'm just like my brother from the waist up," the gimpy Casanova said, attempting to elicit sympathy — and therefore erotic arousal — from the hillbilly hairdresser.

Candy's eyes lingered too long on Ex-Ray's hangdog expression as the Pinto gained speed toward the ramped roadway leading up and over the raised tracks. She looked in the rear view and saw flashing blue lights sliding around the corner, chasing them. The blacktop sloped up steep, taller than the Pinto, filling the windshield like the front row of a drive-in movie. The road's surface was scored and scarred from decades of frames, front ends and oil pans gouging tar and chewing asphalt after overestimating the speed at which the railroad could be crossed. The gates were down and the locomotive's headlight was two Pinto lengths from the crossing. The huge iron horse was equidistant to the intersection with Candy's little car. All wheels churned like bursting hearts on both vehicles. Candy stood up on the gas with her baby blue bunny slipper as if that would help them beat the train. The little engine wound up and screamed like it was being tortured at Abu Ghraib. She bashed her forearm across Ex-Ray's chest as if he were her only child. "Hold on, Ex-Ray!"

"I ain't never had no woman a'tall, Candy."

The Pinto hit the ramp at 60, ripped through the crossing gate, bit a chunk of bitumen, and leapt into the air, sailing aloft through the locomotive's cycloptic headlight, inside a deafening Doppler effect, as the train's coal black nose pounded the rear quarter panel, spinning the Pinto like a lopsided frisbee.

"Make love to me, Candy Methe!"

The Pinto spiraled into the pavement with a crunch, hopped once on all fours like a baby lamb, and promptly flipped like an Olympic high diver. Something resembling a needle jabbed Ex-Ray's lower spine. His head was cracked sideways. The Pinto's faux-velvet headliner split from the roof below and, as the car tumbled, wrapped itself around his face like an octopus smothering him for dear life. The car slid to a stop, tits up, facing backwards, wheels still spinning full throttle. The engine whined a death rattle as it slung black oil.

The train was screeching steel on steel in full emergency brake.

Three cop cars were blinking between passing wheels on its far side.

Hanging from her seat belt upside down, Candy turned the ignition key, grinding the starter. "Daddy's gonna be so mad at me," she cried, a nostril bubbling blood across her forehead.

Ex-Ray, unencumbered by safety features and overwhelmed by the scent of feminine underarm, ripped the roof liner off his face and seized the opportunity to sexually assault Candy as she hung like a bat. He squeezed her tits tight against her clavicles while forcing his tongue between her lips.

She twisted away from him. "Goddammit Ex-Ray! Look!"

Ex-Ray's eyes swiveled in their sockets to see cops running back and forth, trapped on the other side of the screeching train. They were pointing excitedly at the Pinto through intermittent gaps in the train's slowing undercarriage.

"Come on!" Ex-Ray grabbed Candy's forearm and popped her seat belt. He dragged her out of the busted hatchback window, yanked her along beside him. He loped sideways, limping on his deflicted leg. His head bobbed like a novelty glass ostrich dipping its red velvet snout into a shot glass of rum.

As if on cue, a gray haired granny arrived at the railroad crossing in the low mileage 1990 Cadillac that her late husband had bought brand new, a week before he clutched his chest. The cops were going nuts, waving arms, no doubt screaming, as the oblivious rural socialite eased to a stop beside the flipped Pinto. The elderly widow was completely innocent, naïve, unaware of any possible danger. She politely switched her electric window down to ask the nice young couple what the matter was, and quickly found her ass plunked into a black pool of hot Pinto oil as her Cadillac recklessly sped away in reverse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

### WEDNESDAY NIGHT

The two prisoners, chained and orange, silently audited the interstate's diastolic kachunks passing underneath the Crown Vic. The headlights illuminated mile markers, eight concrete seams per tenth, a skipping heartbeat that both men were forced to count, thanks to the lineage of OCD that infected their genetic heritage.

The butch FBI Agent drove the Vic right past the bright exit for Hotlanta without turning. Polaris maintained its position slightly left of center in the windshield. The shimmering bug zappers of sleepy suburbia gave way to the darkness of agricultural north Georgia.

The old tar-black man diverted his gaze to the interior, eventually focusing obvious ire on his son. "Look at your sorry ass, all beat up," the father said, his eyes scanning his son, shoelace to eyeball, with obvious disdain. "All shackled up like a goddamn slave."

"You ain't hardly two days out of a seventeen-year stretch in the big house," Da'Ndre said. "And look at you. You ain't got no right to badmouth nobody."

The old man peered out the Crown Vic's window. His nostrils fogged a Venn diagram on the cool glass. He sideglanced the driver. "Whar you takin us, bitch?"

The black butch FBI Agent glanced in her mirror, made eye contact with Andre. "I been waitin for you."

"Waitin for me for _what_?" Andre asked, irritated.

"I done read all them letters you sent to that honky ho."

"You did what?"

"You a kinky muthafucka."

The conversation felt awkward. Andre returned his gaze to his son. "Unemployed. Handcuffed in the back seat of a FBI car," the old black man sniffed. "You are good for nothin, boy."

"You are so stupid..." Da'Ndre lifted his fists to the length allowed by the cuffs that were locked around a steel bracket. "You so stupid you don't even know how to write no goddamn apostrophe."

"Izzat why you never wrote me back? Bad grammar?"

"I ain't talkin bout no goddamn grammar," Da'Ndre said. "I'm talkin bout my _name."_

"What about your fuckin name?"

"The apostrophe's in the wrong place, you dumbass."

"No it ain't," the old man said.

"D-A-apostrophe-N-D-R-E is stupid!"

"It means ' _OF_ Andre,'" Andre said. _"DUH._ Like Leonardo _DUH_ -apostrophe- _VINCHY_ means Leonardo _OF_ Vinchy."

"There ain't no goddamn apostrophe in Leonardo da Vinci!" Da'Ndre said. "You are so fucking stupid!"

"You wanna pop off on me? Next time you born, you make sure you smart enough to name your own ass," the father said. "I am so ashamed of you, boy." He tried to cross his arms, then realized he couldn't because of the handcuffs.

"Fuck you old man."

"Naw," Andre said. "Fuck _YOU_. YOU GOT ME INTO THIS SHIT BOY!"

The two men raged at their restraints, discovering that they could only thrash and butt each other with their own foreheads, because those were the only parts of their bodies that could meet in the center.

The butch Agent's eyes scanned from father to son in the rear view as the two men smashed their foreheads together repeatedly. She twisted around and firehosed a liberal stream of FBI mace over her shoulder into the rear compartment. "I told y'all to shut the fuck up!"

# # #

At a nickel to midnight, the father and son awoke to discover each other's drool on each other's shoulders, and the Crown Vic's high beams reflecting off a 'South Carolina Welcomes You' sign.

The FBI car was stopped, rocking in the occasional wake of a passing semi. Agent Wright was perched on the balls of her feet, squatting beside the car in the warmth mushrooming from underneath the engine compartment. Her pants were down around her ankles. The gobo glow of the Vic's interior dome light illuminated a burst dam of urine flooding between the toes of her black patents.

"Hey!" Andre shouted at his window. "I gotta piss, too, goddammit!"

"Me, too!" Da'Ndre shouted.

Gayle Wright pulled up her panties, palm smoothed them against her ample ass. She hoisted her masculine, jingle-belted britches around her hip handles and laced herself up. She opened Andre's door and gave both men a serious look, one at a time. "Aight," she said. "Age before beauty." She unholstered a pistol from her armpit, produced a key from her breast pocket and popped one side of Andre's handcuffs open. She pulled the old man out of the car, spun him toward the fender, planted a knee in his spine and re-cuffed his hands in the small of his back. "Go over there and take a whiz and if you try anything I'll shoot your black ass and your goddamn boy, too, because I give zero fucks bout neither one of y'all's asses."

"I can't piss like this," Andre said. "You gotta uncuff me, or at least pull my pecker out."

Agent Wright considered the situation as she pulled Da'Ndre from the other side of the car. "One at a time," she said, holding her handcuff key. She looked Da'Ndre dead in the eye. "Don't you fuck with me, boy."

The old man shouted. "Hurry up! I'm gonna piss my pants!"

"Shut up!"

"I won't try nothin'," Da'Ndre said, "I promise."

"Lissen up," Agent Gayle Wright said, poised to unlock Da'Ndre. "Y'all boys are in a lot of trouble right now. Both y'all understand that?"

"I understand it," Da'Ndre said.

"I gotta piss bad," Andre said.

"What that means is, y'all are both fucked unless you do what I say." She held the handcuff key up for Da'Ndre to see. "Y'all help me out, do what I say, and you both go free." She stuck the key into Da'Ndre's handcuff. "I got me a job to do up in Detroit. If y'all help me out, then I ain't never seen your asses before in my life. Y'all got that?"

"I got it."

"I'm gonna piss my pants in one second."

"The three of us gonna go kill Earl Finkter, ain't we?"

The two prisoners were dumbfounded.

"And we gonna get away with all this shit." Agent Wright popped Da'Ndre's left hand loose, leaving the cuffs dangling from his right. "Y'all try somethin stupid, it's game over. Y'all stick with me, you straight. Understand? Now you go on over there and take a whiz," she said, waving Da'Ndre toward the trees with the barrel of her pistol. "When you're done, you can help yer daddy with his dick."

"I ain't gonna help that mothafucka with nothin." Da'Ndre pulled down his zipper while jogging into the shadow of a palmetto just before it was too late. "Ahhhhh...shit," he sighed, releasing a stream as big around as a first grade pencil.

Andre performed the peewee dance. "I told you I'm gonna piss my pants, goddammit!"

"When he's done, then it's your turn."

"I can't wait that long! Specially not with him pissin like that!"

The old man trotted toward the shadows where his son was pissing. "Pull out my dick, boy."

Da'Ndre looked over his shoulder, recognized a familial expression of emotional angst, and briefly felt a twinge of empathy as he replaced his own penis inside his orange jumpsuit. But then he bolted as fast as he could run in leg shackles toward the vine-tangled slopes eroded from the landscape by the ancient Savannah River.

"Freeze!" Agent Wright fired a warning shot over the fleeing man's head.

Da'Ndre's legs chopped like a boy with the shits running toward the potty with his underpants around his ankles. He'd figure out how to swim once he got to the river.

A second bullet ripped through foliage near Da'Ndre's left ear, followed by its thunder. He tripped and somersaulted down a raccoon trail. At the bottom, he jumped back to his feet, ignoring complaints from his shackled ankles as he stumbled over water-worn cobblestones along the Savannah's edge. He ran til his ankles were bloody, and found a hiding place behind a verdant curtain of poison ivy. His heart was bursting, his lungs were desperate for hemp.

He spread the thick stand of itchweed with his bare hands to look back. Agent Wright's handcuffs were still dangling from his right wrist. He peered up the hill and listened, waiting for the big black bitch to hunt his sorry ass down and empty the clip of her FBI semi-auto into his ass.

He lay back into the vines to catch his breath, and awakened when a bullfrog signaled all clear. But then an amphibian symphony became a surround-sound lullaby that put him right back to sleep for the rest of the night.

# # #

At daybreak, the bullfrogs paid no attention to the increasing traffic crossing the interstate bridge above. Da'Ndre awoke with a fiery rash on his eyelids, ass cheeks and testicles, the three places he had explored with his poisoned hands while unconscious.

He examined the cuffs and shackles, tight around his right wrist and both ankles. He laid the seventeen chrome chain links between his feet on a prominent granite globe worn round by rapids. He picked up the rock's cousin, a paleo axe with a circumference as elliptical as the orbit of Halley's Comet, and began smashing the chain with the primal determination of a caveman. For two full-on hours, the stubborn government-issue, mil spec links refused to succumb to the primitive attack. His muscles cramped, his right wrist became encircled with an enraged rash due to the metallic muddling of urushiol, and old man river just kept on rollin.

He stumbled to his feet after two links in the ankle chains finally disintegrated. He took three squishy, jingling, waterlogged steps and collapsed. He crawled up the bank toward the interstate like a tortured POW. He was starving for pancakes and bacon drowned in something, anything, it didn't matter. He was so hungry, he would have eaten artificially flavored maple-style high fructose corn syrup food product, that's how hungry he was. He stopped at a muddy rivulet: a dribbling drip of a tributary to the mighty Savannah. He tilted his head underneath and caught a few droplets on his parched tongue. For a few sacred seconds, that little rivulet became a heavenly mirage, a hallucination that was right off a picture menu. It was rooty, tooty, fresh and fruity.

He peeked out of the weeds like a feral ferret, eyes panicked, bloodshot, scoping for the enemy. Emerging from the underbrush, he stumbled into the breakdown lane of I-95 North, pirouetted, segued into a bumbling, shuffling backpedal with his thumb out, like, if no one picked him up, he'd eventually get there by walking backwards. His orange nightgown was besmirched with river mud, his right wrist sported its government-issue chrome jewelry, his ankles jangled. Seventeen cars passed before his mental fog lifted and he suddenly realized nobody in their right minds was gonna pick up a filthy, unshaven, down-and-out hitchhiking nigger in an orange jumpsuit with his eyeballs rashed shut and cuffs dangling from his wrist and ankles, even if every passing vehicle was peopled by liberal, white collar negro families sympathetic to the negative sociological effects of institutional racism. So he turned his back on the traffic, hid the handcuffs under his jumpsuit as best he could, and held out his left thumb as he walked north, as if that would solve his problem.

He was halfway to the safety of the palm forest before his brain processed the emergency. He looked south, over his shoulder, and saw the federal Crown Vic receding into the distance. It was the FBI car, he was sure it was the same one, racing the wrong way down I-95, probably topping a hundred miles an hour. Innocent northbound drivers were swerving out of its way. At least a dozen of them careened helter-skelter to avoid head-on collisions.

For a split second as the Crown Vic passed, Da'Ndre had made eye contact with the driver. For some reason – hallucination, perhaps, or mirage, desperation or dehydration – it appeared to Da'Ndre that his very own father, Andre Turnipseed, the blackest man on the face of the earth, was behind the wheel of that FBI car. And while he was still facing south, watching slack-jawed as the car receded into the distance, a classic black-and-white from some redneck backwoods South Carolina county whirled a blinking blue dust devil in hot pursuit.

Smoke rose from a spinout in the distance as the Crown Vic pulled a bootlegger's one-eighty and floored it northbound, back toward Da'Ndre. The anarchic screech of the maneuver arrived two seconds later. The FBI car debuted a serious-as-shit game of high-speed chicken with the cops in the black-and-white. The two competing cars accelerated into an impending head-on. It was g-shit as fuck. At the last second, the county cops chickened out and swerved. The black-and-white roared into the air and off the road, crunching deep into the palms.

The blackest man in the world then slid the federal Crown Vic to a stop beside his son and calmly rolled down the electric passenger window. "Well if it ain't Da-Fuckin-Vinchy hisself," the old man said. "Hitchhikin his black ass in a prison suit."

Da'Ndre leaned over, peered inside, amazed to see his dad in an oversized FBI Agent's outfit, complete with badge. "Da Vinci ain't got no goddamn apostrophe, you stupid fuck," Da'Ndre said to his father. Then he noticed something spongy and brown in the rear floorboard of the car. "What's that in the back?"

"Nekkid FBI bitch. Dead as shit. What the fuck's it look like?"

The black-and-white's wail returned, the county cop car was resurrected from the palms. It was speeding northbound, directly toward them as its siren rose in volume.

"She raped me," Andre said as a means of explanation. "You gettin in or not?"

Da'Ndre stared at his father. "I ain't goin nowhere with you."

"Aight then." Andre tossed a tinkling key ring to his son. "You on your own, Apostrophe!" And he punched the gas, spun the tires, and sped a single car length just before the black-and-white skidded into a fender-crunching sideswipe against the Crown Vic, spinning both cars around in a hail of busted fenders and cockeyed wheels.

Da'Ndre fled the scene on foot, running north. He crossed the interstate median and dove into the underbrush on the west side of the southbound lanes, trying key after key on the cuffs as he ran. When he reached a hiding place, he crouched down and looked back toward the interstate.

A black cop and a white cop jumped from the black-and-white. "Police! Freeze!"

Andre stepped out of the stolen car, clothed in the oversize G-man suit, his arms held up in the air. The bright morning sun glinted off the FBI badge he displayed to the cops in one of his upraised hands.

Then a giant, addled, naked negro man-woman emerged from the rear door of the Crown Vic. She stumbled, barely able to stand, and wildly waved a .40 cal semi-auto. She turned toward Andre, focused her eyes, raised the pistol.

"Put the gun down!" shouted one of the cops, as both of the cops pulled their weapons.

The naked brown she-devil spun around and squinted toward the two cops, her pistol wobbling erratically, drunk in her hand.

The two county cops fired until their own pistols were clicking, poking holes through the fat, naked brown flesh until the giant woman laid down in the dusty gravel to perish in a pool of her own blood.

The county cops saw the black man in the Federal Agent's suit strike the cap on a regulation emergency road flare. He held the hissing flare alight like the statue of liberty, then for some unknown reason, flipped the Crown Vic's gas tank lid open. With one fluid motion the blackest man the two county cops had ever seen in their lives shoved the flare down the tank's throat. The tank breathed fire, becoming a taxpayer-funded dragon. The pressure of flaming hydrocarbon grew as the fake FBI man ran away into the humid palms. The Crown Vic's ass end bucked into the fiery air like a wild Wyoming widowmaker with a shot of tequila poured into a split hoof.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

### NOT SO GOOD FRIDAY

It was the middle of the afternoon, still broad daylight. Ex-Ray rassled a garden gnome for a fugitive's eternity before finally giving up and busting the little bastard's ceramic head wide open against the green slime on the apartment building's formerly white vinyl siding. An oxidized relic of serrated Schlage hopped from the jagged hole in the gnome's otherwise empty skull. It jingled onto the buckled concrete sidewalk like Pavlov's dinner bell. Ex-Ray pitched the murdered gnome's corpse into the nether regions of an elderly boxwood, grabbed the corroded key and assaulted the disagreeable deadbolt, probing the lock's tumblers like a quack gynecologist with a ragged speculum. He finally crossed his eyes, bit his tongue, and busted a glass pane. He performed an awkward reach-around through the glass shards, at long last throwing the door open with a triumphant and chivalrous flourish.

On cue, the lovely Candy Methe timidly crawled from the carjacked Caddy and tiptoed across the sharp gravel parking lot in her sexy bunny slippers and cheap lingerie. She hunched her shoulders to make herself invisible. The gravels bruised her heels. She scanned the apartment building's windows for signs of witnesses as she broke into a canter. When she ducked under the fungus-infected willow that overgrew the moldy basement efficiency, she was certain that she had remained unseen.

Inside the little apartment, Ex-Ray ransacked the fridge for booty.

Candy pushed the door closed behind herself and surveyed the contour of Ex-Ray's ass, no doubt hoping she could restore the erotic memories of his dead brother. They were high school memories, so the vast majority of them were misfiled and corrupt, due to the effects of the inevitable passage of time, the occasional swig of moonshine, and the habitual ingestion of trailer-made pharmaceuticals.

Ex-Ray helped himself to a can of Miller Lite. He wiped the lid with the sleeve of his orange jail suit. "You wanna beer?"

"Any wine in there?" Candy pushed her way past him to reach into the fridge. Her blonde frizz, which had been customized for half-price by one of her co-workers for the occasion of Ray's impending freedom, brushed against Ex-Ray's oversensitive wattle. "This looks good." She pulled an aged Australian rosé from the back row. The kangaroo on its label sported an ambitious penis formed by an athletic swoosh of desiccated ketchup. She gripped the protruding cork with her molars, ripped it in two and spit it into the corner. The other half of the cork still choked the neck of the bottle. She dunked her hand into the frigid, nasty dishwater, retrieved a filthy knife, and used it to jab the remaining cork down into the blushing liquid, where it floated with several of its children like a family of Haitian refugees on a raft during a shark attack. She wrapped her lips around the stem and tilted it bottoms-up, chug-a-lugging half of it while her eyes explored the unkempt double bed awaiting their unbridled passion.

This apartment was hardly different from living in a basement underneath one's parents, except the upstairs wasn't connected on the inside and any people who lived in the apartment upstairs had to be someone else's parents. She scanned the framed photos, discovering a common all-American theme, which included short, straight cropped hair, camaraderie, blue uniforms, sidearms and badges. "Who lives here?"

"An old friend of mine," Ex-Ray said. He took a dipping hobble forward on his gimpy leg, closing the distance between them. He placed his hands on her hips, and gazed into her eyes.

The wine was already clutching her heart in a death grip. She scanned his manscape, from the graying hair curling out around the zipper of his jumpsuit to the bloodshot road maps in his eyes. He was right, she thought. From the waist up, he did look identical to his mown-down twin.

Their first kiss was clumsy, clammy, sensuous and virginal. The exchange of sulfurous saliva, the texture of sandpaper on their tongues, the clank of mutually stained enamel — it was all so erotic, Candy flopped backwards onto the threadbare bachelor sheets, pulling Ex-Ray on top of her. The bed was infused with foreign pheromones, beer stains, and the seven mysterious secretions of a lonely single man. They stripped off their own clothes and clamped their naked bodies together.

Candy imagined herself with dead Ray come back to life, as Ray's inconsiderate gimp twin searched for her power button in vain. He didn't know where it was and didn't bother to ask for directions. She endured his buckshot-deformed hip, the bones clicking with every stroke like a fuck robot. The paranoid fugitive's erection fizzled every time granny dropped dentures or diapers upstairs. Candy grew tired of having the responsibility of creatively re-inflating his little scaredy cat time and time again.

Finally, he entered her unprepared vagina. He immediately shuddered, winced and babbled the exact same spittle-besmirched death rattle as his brother, signifying the end of her spread-eagled obligation. She reached for a cigarette, then thought better of it. No need to allow such a filthy habit to ruin the joy of smoking.

The naked jailbird crawled off his dead brother's psychotic fiancée and limped to the icebox, where he rifled through the condiments and sauces. Candy stayed in the shame nest and wiped Ex-Ray's oddly discolored and putrid goo from her defiled loins. When she looked up, he was slurping Kraft cole slaw dressing directly from its plastic squeeze bottle, like he had finally gotten the inspiration to suck on a tit.

The door burst open with the crack of a jackboot and Officer Purvis Q Nimrod III — Shannon County PD's Officer of the Year — yelled _FREEZE!_

Candy screamed, cowering under the bedsheet as Nimrod plugged her memory pillow with a matching pair of 9mm hollow points that it wouldn't soon forget. Two huge explosions boomed from the barrel of Nimrod's gun in the tiny apartment.

Everyone heard granny screech and scramble upstairs. Her classic American-made Bell Rotary Telephone slammed and jingled as it skittered across the hardwood above them. Then the Shannon County Officer of the Year swiveled to threaten Ex-Ray with his outstretched pistol.

Ex-Ray extended friendly, open arms toward Nimrod. "How the fuck you doin buddy?" He offered a nude hug and a mayo-creamy grin to his long-lost friend. "What happened to your face, man? You busted a tooth. You're all fucked up around your lips and shit. Why are you hunched over?"

Nimrod took a step backward to maintain his distance from Ex-Ray. "Stay right there. Don't come no closer, Ex-Ray. You ain't my buddy no more."

"My daddy gave you your job, Purv. He hired you even though you and me, we got in trouble for them pipe bombs, back when we was kids, you remember that, don'cha?" Ex-Ray dipped as he took a friendly step toward Nimrod with his gimp leg.

"Statute of limitations, Rex. Juvenile. I'm all clear. But you're not. You're a wanted man now. You're a fugitive and I'm a certified officer of the law with responsibilities. I gotta take you in. Get your prison suit back on." He glanced over at Candy's naked tits. "Candy, I'm gonna have to take you in, too. Get dressed, both of ya." Nimrod tried to take another step back, but his ass bumped into the edge of the open door. He kicked it closed so it wouldn't get in his way if he needed to retreat another step back.

"You left the key out there for me, inside the garden nigger, like you always do." Ex-Ray took a normal step forward.

"Don't come no closer, Ex-Ray, I'm warnin ya!" Nimrod shuffled backward until his heels clacked against the door. Then he keyed his collar mic and spoke into it out the side of his mouth. "Bertha I'm gonna need backup over at my apartment." There was no response, not even static. Nimrod spanked his radio. Something appeared to be wrong with it. It wasn't turned on or charged up or something. His pistol was shaking, his face was flushed. He fiddled with the transceiver on his belt and keyed his mic again. "Bertha I'm gonna need some backup, come on."

"Purv, is your dick bleeding?"

When Nimrod looked down at his crotch, Ex-Ray made a monumental leap forward on his bad leg, grabbed his cop buddy by the comb-over and deviated his old friend's septum on the formica countertop, over and over. Candy Methe would later testify in Shannon County Circuit Court that she counted each ferocious beat of the attack as if it was the church bells ringing at the Second Baptist Church, should they ever strike seventeen o'clock.

Officer Purvis Q Nimrod III melted down into an unconscious blue-and-gray heap. His regulation pistol was still alert in his fingers. It had a hair trigger that let loose a couple more rounds for the road, sending both bullets zinging in wild ricochets inside the subterranean poured concrete walls.

After Nimrod's skull slapped the cold linoleum, Ex-Ray threaded the cop's knocked-out forefinger out of the trigger guard, took possession of the pistol, and then locked Nimrod's wrists around a table leg with Nimrod's own police cuffs.

"I'm gonna hafta tell em you kidnapped me, Ex-Ray," Candy Methe said, holding the twice-shot pillow over her flushed breasts.

"I don't give a shit what you tell em," Ex-Ray said, opening the cop's closet. He shopped through Nimrod's street clothes like he was at the Goodwill. "By the way, Candy, I wasn't no goddamn virgin." He didn't bother to look at her. "I just told you that so I could get my dick in your pussy."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

### TUESDAY EVENING

"I am so fucking tired of begging!" Gaia was soullessly pounding memorized beats, just like a computerized Japanese drumbox. She shouted out of desperation, interrupting JC's vocals while he sodomized a public domain hymn with his affected soft rock tenor.

"Come on, Gaia, be quiet," he chirped back at her between verses. "People will hear you."

"People will hear me? Like _who?_ What people?" she demanded. "Who's gonna hear us? Nobody's around!"

The town square park had an admittedly minuscule potential audience. But JC was confident there was a reason why Jesus had preordained that they would run out of fossil fuel at this specific place and time.

"They'll come over," JC quipped between lyrics. He nodded toward a few stragglers wandering suspiciously around the lonely swing sets, picnic tables and public bathrooms.

The only significant group of people in the entire park were otherwise occupied by a children's birthday party. The parents were sipping white wine while allowing their children to risk permanent paralysis by jumping inside a semi-inflated, overpopulated bouncy castle.

"People _love_ our music, honey, you know that," JC said. "They'll be here. We're giving them the opportunity to support _Jesus_."

"We're fucking _begging_ ," Gaia said, continuing to drum on autopilot. "Look at all the money in that dude's cup." Without missing a beat, she pointed one of her drumsticks across the sidewalk at a ragged, homeless disabled veteran. He was asleep on a park bench. He had a misspelled cardboard plea for generosity leaning on the bench's legs, and beside that, a dogeared Carls Jr paper cup overflowing with cash. He was a scroungy looking dude who had nothing to trade for loose change except an opportunity to assuage the public's guilt for their stupid support of endless war. "He's making more than we are," Gaia shouted.

"Gaia honey, we only need seventy dollars."

"For _gas_ ," she said. "I'm fucking _starving_."

A little girl wandered toward them and stood on the sidewalk, fascinated by the duo's music. She was googly eyed, a few years before she would have the feminine hormones necessary to sprout boobs and become erotically enamored with JC's pelvis. She sucked on a jumbo lollipop, dripping a sticky saliva rainbow onto her pink babydoll party dress. The ribbon of a helium-filled Happy Birthday balloon was essentially forgotten in the flaccid fingers of her other hand, stuck in place by the glue of her own sweet slobber. The girl's tiny pink balloon-grasping mitt also loosely held a crisp green image of Ulysses S Grant, the stern dead president on the US $50 bill.

"Jesus wants you to love me..." sang JC. He signed the hand movements he had made up to illustrate the narrative of their signature song.

Gaia saw the girl's mom beside the moon bounce in the distant background, busily patching the busted heads of two bleeding boys who were whining and crying, competing for her first aid.

JC knew he only had a couple of minutes to coax and cajole the neglected girl out of her birthday cash. And if that didn't work, he figured he could threaten the little sucker-chomper with eternal damnation to get it. Unless, of course, her mom became aware of her missing daughter and snatched the girl back. No doubt if she noticed her daughter missing, she would launch a panicked, screaming, desperate search through the park for her wandering, high fructose-retarded space cadet, and ruin the opportunity for the little girl to prove her love for – or fear of – Jesus.

JC's Warriors arrived at their long pause. It was that unfortunate break in the song on the fucked-up CD that they had embraced and appropriated for dramatic tension in a concert. But with an audience of one, the pause could be used for more interpersonal communication.

"Do you want Jesus to love you?" JC asked the little girl.

"Don't do that, Jonnie," Gaia said.

The little girl nodded, sucking on her giant lollipop.

"Jesus wants you to love him," he said. "Jesus wants to love you back." He used his pointer finger to illustrate.

"Jonnie, please..."

"What can you do to get Jesus to love you?" JC asked the little girl.

The girl furrowed her brow, sucked her lollipop, gazed back into JC's eyes and shrugged. "You have funny teeth," she said.

"Little girl," Gaia said, "little girl, go on back to your party."

JC turned to Gaia with icy eyes, leaned close to her face. "She's got a fifty, Gaia." Then he smiled at the girl, a soft, endearing, closed-mouth smile. "If you want someone to love you, you give them your most precious possession," he said. He waved his upward-facing palms toward his upside-down fedora on the sidewalk, a gesture inviting the girl to donate. It was an expensive, silk-lined wool hat that Gaia had given him when they were flush with cash from her father's measly estate, back when she still experienced a modicum of fondness for him. There were two photocopies of dollar bills already there, two counterfeit singles that JC had primed the hat with in advance, as an example to passers-by, a serving suggestion for their occasional audience to imitate, insinuating that previous wandering pedestrians had found the duo's music so uplifting, so inspiring, that they contributed a donation, because the clean young Christian musicians were worthy of encouragement. "Do you have anything for Jesus?"

The little girl nervously glanced down at the fifty in her hand. Then she nodded yes to JC.

"Jesus Christ, Jonnie, don't you have any goddamn self-respect?" Gaia shooed the girl by backhanding a drumstick like she was chasing a fly off potato salad at a family reunion. "Little girl, you run on along now, go on back to your momma."

The little girl's mouth made a slurping, sucking sound as she pulled the lollipop out of it. "But I want Jesus to love me," she said.

"Don't worry, he loves you," Gaia said. "You don't have to give him anything."

"Don't be afraid," JC said to the little girl. "Don't be afraid to step forward and give to Jesus." He indicated the silk-lined cash hat again. Then he shot a nasty glare over his shoulder to his wife.

The little girl engaged in a timid staring contest with President Grant. JC saw the girl's mother in the background, becoming aware of her daughter's absence from her own birthday party. "Rebecca? Rebecca?" The girl's name wafted past them, unanswered, carried into the faraway ether by the gentle park breeze.

"Give to Jesus, Rebecca," JC said. "Give to Jesus."

"Omigod you are so full of shit, Jonnie, I can't believe you are doing this. Little girl, go on, get out of here. Your mother's calling you."

"Give to Jesus...give Jesus your most precious possession and he will love you, I promise."

"REBECCA!!!"

The little girl stepped up to the fedora and fingered her fifty.

"Give to Jesus, Rebecca," JC said. "You don't want to burn in hell fire for eternity when you die, do you?"

"No, sir."

"Omigod, puh-leeze, Jonnie. What is wrong with you? Cut the shit! Little girl, get the _fuck_ out of here _now_ , alright?"

The little girl gazed up at JC. From her perspective, the setting sun behind him would have no doubt cast a coronal glow around his brunette locks, a heavenly halo. Her jaw dropped open; she appeared awestruck by the walking, talking graven image. "OK," she said. "I want to give to Jesus." Then she ditched her sticky, slobber-coated sucker into the silk lining of the donation hat and ran away, still clutching her money. Her Happy Birthday balloon chased her across the grassy park like a bouncing airborne puppy dog.

"You are such a fucking asshole," Gaia said, as JC extracted the sucker from the hat and tossed it into some nearby bushes. "I can't believe how low you have sunk." She struck up the next song in their set list. JC reluctantly joined in with his keyboard.

Halfway through the song, a dirty blonde bimbo wandered up. She was sexy in a doggy sort of fashion. She was wearing irregular cut-off jeans, dusty Converse hi-tops, and a slinky tee top with nothing else caressing her B-cups. She had been leaning against the bathroom building, watching the holy street performers from a distance. She was obsessed with smoothing her oily hair with bare hands. As the blonde listened to the lyrics, mascara began streaking down her cheeks. She was obviously touched by their spiritual music. She appeared to be desperate and lonely, emotionally fragile, rejected, in need of heavenly solace. It wasn't often that JC's Warriors had such a positive emotional impact on their audience. It was as if the young lady's soul was being saved right in front of their eyes.

At the end of the song, the blonde hottie approached the band, wiping away her tears. "How much is your CD?" she asked.

"Fifteen dollars," JC said.

"I don't have that much," the tearful girl said. She unfurled a trio of wrinkled singles.

"We'll take that."

The bimbo swapped her meager cash for the duo's CD. She immediately tore open the cellophane wrapper and pulled the CD out of its plastic jewel case. She chucked the case, threw away all its crinkly plastic wrap and the expensive glossy pamphlet. All the carefully edited biographical liner notes, song lyrics, credits, sexy photos of JC and regular photos of Gaia — the crying bimbo threw them all into the park's filthy garbage can, where they landed amidst mounds of stinky bagged dog poop. "I don't need all that shit," she said. Then she lifted the shiny side of the CD in front of her face like a hand mirror. She wiped away her tear tracks, smoothed out the mascara stain with a tissue and reviewed the results in her CD reflection. "I just broke up with my boyfriend," she said, shoving her new CD pocket mirror into the back pocket of her sexy jean shorts. "I'm gonna get revenge on his sorry ass." And with that she gave a determined smile and pranced away toward a gang of black dudes hanging around a park bench selling dope.

"Great job, Jonnie," Gaia said. "Another sixty-seven dollars and we'll be on the road again in no time." She started drumming the intro for the next song.

A Carls Jr cup flew through the air like a scud missile and bounced on the sidewalk in front of them. $66.17 in loose singles and jangling change exploded like shrapnel, flying in every direction. The homeless vet on the park bench was propped up on one elbow. He stared at them with fury in his eyes, like they were gooks at My Lai. "Get the fuck out of here," the grizzled man said. "I'm trying to get some goddamn sleep."

# # #

JC's Warriors gassed up and split a Carls Jr #3 meal. They were back on the road and halfway to their next gig after only four hours of overnight driving. They were so exhausted, numb from the road, and high on taurine, they didn't even notice the lazy .40 cal slug as it punched through the floorboard of their noisy clunker from the dark depths of the interstate median's steep gully at sunrise.

And they never even heard the next two shots that came from the FBI Agent's pistol.

CHAPTER THIRTY

### THURSDAY 1:11 A.M.

FBI Agent Gayle Wright's Crown Vic rolled past the ass end of the oversize _Welcome to South Carolina_ sign as she calmly shadowed the orange-suited midnight-black criminal, the desperate lawbreaker who was fleeing north on foot. The poor man had no chance of escape. He was tripping over leg shackles, his wrists were cuffed behind his back, and he was pissing inside his orange jumpsuit.

She pulled up beside him and slowed to a delicate roll, a speed that matched his erratic but valiant gallop. She rolled down the electric passenger window and displayed an inviting Pepsodent smile. "It's swamp on both sides of the road, my brotha," she said as nicely as possible, "You ain't got nowhere to run."

Andre doubletimed it, tearing into her headlight beams. Gayle shadowed him, heeling his ankles with her front bumper like a bloodhound on the trail as he ran, and ran, and ran.

_Yeah,_ Agent Wright thought, _he's been pumping iron in prison alright._ Them pulsing muscles, the intense focus, the masochistic desire for freedom – all trademarks of a man who's been locked up for years and then released into a world of pussy like he's been shot out of a cannon dick-first. She tailgated the backs of his knees. He kept running. She charley-horsed the muscles of his calf with her bumper. He sped up.

Gayle Wright stepped on the gas, swooped a marker light in front of his thighs. She slammed her brakes and cornered him inside a trio of horny palms. She threw the Vic's shifter into P, leveraged her bulk from the seat, and turned to face her prey across the car's warm hood. Her eyes drowned in the physical beauty of Andre Turnipseed's rippling masculine form. He was deep Saharan black and 50 years old if he was a day. Panting like an African lion, hands on knees, brow wrinkled, face angled toward the ground, but eyes gazing up at her from underneath his forehead, intently, directly into her soul.

"A man like you..." Agent Gayle Wright said, "A man like you could turn a girl like me straight."

# # #

Sheets of rain attacked in waves between wiper swishes as Agent Gayle Wright drove north in the darkness. She reached up and tilted her rear view, fixating on her recaptured licorice candy in the back seat. The sweat, the brief brush with free range, the raw breath, the leftover hint of Right Guard Classic, all this fine sensory input fused into a seductive witch's brew of fornicative desire. It was like she was a teenager again, all confused and horny by the irresistible siren call from the forbidden fruit. But this time, her fruit was conveniently hog-cuffed for her pleasure in the back seat, to be tapped at her very own discretion.

When she looked back up between the wipers, she was surprised to find the road gone. It had completely disappeared, as if it had never existed, as if it had been a mirage in the dark rainy mist, as if her headlights had switched off of their own accord. Which direction the road had turned, she hadn't a clue. All she could see was a gleaming section of freshly galvanized guardrail, two sections of which shone its proud, brand-new beauty, appearing to have just been repaired. Those two newly replaced sections were flanked by a stand of pine with busted trunks and broken branches, all split and twisted from regular familiarity with confused motor vehicles.

Agent Wright slammed her brakes and skidded into an uncontrolled corkscrew. The FBI's Crown Vic caromed off the brand-new guardrail, traversed the highway with three wild spins, and slid backwards into the hopeless cleavage of a steep median gully. The car clunked deep into the ditch and bottomed out backwards. Its grille was grinning at the sky. Its headlights shone toward a sickle of moon. Its front tires were freewheeling in the cool night breeze, as the engine still idled, the mouth of its tailpipe crammed six inches deep in gully muck, blowing suggestive mud bubbles like the funny uncle at a toddler's birthday party.

"I'll take care of this," Agent Wright said, as if Andre gave a shit. She killed the headlights, shoved the flaccid air bags aside, and peered over her shoulder. She directed a lusty leer toward Andre's lean, sinewy form as he struggled to sit up from where he had landed, on the shelf underneath the rear window.

She shook the last three pills out of her prescription bottle directly into her mouth and swallowed them dry. Then she looked at the bottle and realized those pills weren't hers. They were the ones she'd confiscated from those white kids at the Phish concert. No telling what they were.

She turned around and stared at Andre for a full minute, silent, her focus flitting from one personal detail to another, always circling back to lock on his eyes. She didn't need no goddamn tarot cards to tell her what to do with this mandingo. A demonic spirit pulled her thick lips into a leer as if she were possessed, a devil's marionette. "You wrote some kinky-ass love letters to that Dixie bitch," she said.

She flexed her thighs like an Olympian and busted her door open with pudgy legs. She hopped out and let the door slam with tremendous weight from the upended angle of the car. She unzapped the remote autolocks, yanked the rear door open and peered into the back seat like Andre was a wrapped-up present on Christmas morning. "You mine now big boy," she said. "You gonna do to me what you said you was gonna do to her in them letters you wrote."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

### THE ESCAPE

Andre rolled onto the seat and wormed his way toward the far side. He wrapped his fingers around the door handle and pulled maniacally, but it was springy in his hand, loose and disabled. He had no opportunity to escape. He pulled his knees into a defensive position, huddling in the V of the tilted cruiser's rear seat.

The butch Agent unbelted her sidearm, tossed it into a heap in the rear floorboard, out of Andre's reach. "Them two muthafuckas, they kilt my daddy," she said, advancing toward Andre.

Andre tried to kick her away, but she merely grabbed his ankle chains and jerked him flat across the seat on his back, down in the hollow between the seat cushion and seat back in the tilted car, stretching him like he was a heretic on a medieval rack.

"That Dingledine muthafucka and his buddy, Earl Finkter," she said. "They kilt my daddy dead."

Andre fought against her to the extent allowed under pain of steel shackles cutting into wrist and ankle bone, but the horny brown giantess overcame his struggles. She crawled on top of him, pinning him down with her tree-trunk thighs. She paused on her knees just long enough to unbutton her federally issued white shirt, disvelcro her Kevlar vest, and liberate her jumbo Victoria's Secret. Her huge brown breasts had been unconstitutionally imprisoned for too long by Uncle Sam.

"What the fuck are you doing, bitch?"

"I flipped them cards for thirty years," she said, tearing into the belly of Andre's piss-moist orange jumpsuit. "I done waited for the stars to tell me it was time to get my revenge on them two muthafuckas." She used both hands to rip the institutional polyester open, chasing the rip in both directions, all the way up his chest, and all the way down around his crotch. "I been real patient." She tore through the taint of his jumpsuit, and then slid a cold claw into his checked boxers, clutching his frightened Mr Softee.

She swung her leg over Andre, lowered her great weight on top of him, and slid her massive, sweaty dark chocolate nipples across his bare chest. "You and me, we gonna kill that muthafucka Finkter, ain't we?"

"You're smothering me, bitch!"

She kicked off her regulation patents, pushed down her nude-colored knee-hi hosiery, and wiggled out of her FBI pants. She threw it all out the door. She reared up on her knees like a wild, fat, naked pony, revealing an overly skimpy pink thong and an oversize Mexican tattoo dawning from an unkempt crotchfro. The tat was nearly as old as a birthmark, a stone black Cupid heart with fuzzy borders. It had been dissolving for two decades into her meat. The word _DADDY_ was barely legible as an artistic brown negative space in an Old English font. Below the word were inscribed his years of birth and death, an entire lifetime begun before Andre's own entrance into this world, and gone before he ever went to prison. She slammed the car door closed, trapping the stench of her sweaty government field work inside the vehicle. Andre discovered her camel toe to be wrongly persuasive as she smothered his best buddy.

"I'm saving myself!" Andre said, genuinely panicked as his member, deprived of the feminine touch for seventeen years, responded to her stimulation against his will.

She reached down and freed him through the convenience slot of his boxers. "Atta boy," the big woman said, grinding her surprisingly minuscule clit across his natural-born foreskin. "Atta boy." The woman's remy stubble ripped the soft underbelly of Andre's penis like a cheese grater with a five o'clock shadow.

She throttled the old cuffed black man with a vice grip under his chin, nearly strangling him as she slid her camel toe back and forth over his aroused penis for three full minutes before reaching down and inserting his raw, non-discriminating erection into her horny vagina. She emitted an exhalation of satisfaction.

Was this rape? Andre had no direct experience to draw on. He had thwarted two attempts on his ass in prison, the first with a one-two jab to the would-be molester's mouth, the second with an exhausting and bloody seventy-two hour cage match over the course of an entire Christmas weekend as second-string guards placed wagers on the outcome like he was a Roman gladiator. He had never in his wildest dreams thought he would have to fight to keep his dick out of pussy. But then there he was, hogtied, pinned on his back, getting boned by an ugly, steroid-ignited, drug-addled, psychopathic and superstitious FBI Agent with Kevlar stink on her tits, and her tits in his face, and his stupid, stupid prick agreeing to the joy ride as if this woman were the lily white twenty-year-old Miss Dixie Clippens herself.

"We gonna kill that muthafucka, ain't we big boy?"

The blood vessels in Andre's eyes were bright crimson. The big woman's fake nails bit into his throat as she clamped down on his windpipe. His airflow was so restricted, he couldn't even respond with a gurgle.

"I said, we gonna kill that muthafucka, ain't we?" She twerked her ass, jacking off his cock with her lesbian meat. She clenched his throat tighter.

Andre's eyes were bulging out of their sockets. He nodded his head to indicate the affirmative. "Okay," he squeaked through his narrowed esophagus.

"What you say?" She put her ear to his lips and released a little pressure on his throat.

"Yeah," Andre managed to whisper.

"Say it!" Gayle Wright sunk her fake nails deep into his neck. "Say it, muthafucka!"

"We gonna kill him," Andre croaked, then struggled to inhale. "We gonna kill Earl Finkter."

The naked FBI Agent suddenly stopped thrusting her hips. She closed her eyes, raised her face toward the Vic's roof liner, and jerked. She jerked, and jerked and jerked. She jerked. She jerked again. And then she jerkedandjerkedandjerked. Twice more. And then she twitched. "Ooooohhhhhh, fuck yeah," she said. Then she released her death grip on Andre's throat, flopped down on top of him, her cheek on his breast, as the two of them caught their breath.

After a few minutes, she finally lifted her head and looked him in the eye. "I found your dynamite seventeen years ago," she said, like it was pillow talk, romantic and confidential. "But the cards told me to wait til you got out."

# # #

The engine of the FBI's Crown Vic was still idling, its tailpipe still blowing mud bubbles.

Andre's head was split wide awake from the pistol's explosion. His eyes were blurry, his stomach was churning, and the choking taste of spent gunpowder convulsed his gag reflex. He didn't know how he had picked up the FBI Agent's pistol, or which way he had shot it. He could have shot that goddamn Jesus bus passing on the interstate above, but that couldn't be true, he thought, it couldn't be them. He must be hallucinating. All he knew for sure was that a naked, air-chilled, blue-faced brown lesbian reverse rapist elephant was crushing his lungs, his ears were ringing like Ma Bell, and the windshield had a dime-size hole in the middle of a huge starburst.

He sloughed the unresponsive nude beast onto the floorboard. The butch's eyes stared into space, marbled with a dull translucence. Rigor mortis engaged her entire skeletal frame, or maybe she was just heavy as shit, Andre wasn't no doctor.

The Grim Reaper's intimacy compelled a gastric river that started with an uncomfortable orgasm of the saliva glands lining Andre's jaw. The sour acid flooded his mercury-laden prison fillings. His stomach spasmed into the floorboard where the dead Agent lay.

Barely able to move, Andre yoga-twisted until he focused the barrel of the pistol onto the side window. Fresh air, he needed fresh air to replace the carbon monoxide that had filled the cabin from the mud-clogged exhaust. Two more shots. He didn't give a shit where the bullets went, as long as they shattered glass, enabled a flow of oxygen, and saved his life.

# # #

Andre floored the FBI's Crown Vic, drifting the road boat sideways through slung mud until a swirling radial caught traction on a concrete culvert. He shredded the tread all the way down to the steel belt. The car broke free and climbed the median bank like a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with a nitro-NASCAR power plant.

Fishtailing onto the interstate, Andre blew southbound in the gritty gravel. He figured he was hitting ninety to a hundred; he couldn't tell because someone must have disconnected the speedometer. Oncoming headlights curved away on each side, passing like fiery balls shot at him from Roman candles. He considered the possibility that he was driving down the wrong side of the highway. In response to his apparent error, he partially diverted his attention from the road to the bank of switches on the Crown Vic's control panel, trying to find the one that would turn on some sort of emergency light package. He knew every FBI car had to have a set of those behind the grille.

Seventeen miles later, as the sun was rising straight into his eyes, Andre found the switch just before he blew past a sleepy county speed trap. Despite Andre's blinking lights, the county cops immediately escalated the situation, further endangering public safety by indulging themselves in a high-speed pursuit in the wrong direction — full speed south on I-95 North.

Andre had no idea what he was going to do – other than to keep going – until he suddenly made eye contact with his apostrophical disappointment of a son. As he passed in a fraction of a second, Andre saw that Da'Ndre was stumbling north with his thumb out, attempting to hitchhike in his filthy orange jail suit, with his whole face swollen up, and silver chains dangling off his right wrist and both ankles. Andre knew his son had as much chance of hitching on I-95 as he would have hailing a cab in a three-piece suit in Manhattan. Besides the cops, there wasn't but one person in the whole goddamn world that would pick his sorry ass up right then.

He looked into the rear view mirror at his son's surprised face, and felt a pang of paternal instinct.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

### TO BE READ ALOUD

Keep going, keep going, don't drink the water,

I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty, can't drink the water,

Keep going, keep going, don't drink the water,

I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty, can't drink the water,

Oh hell I'm just gonna have some water, it won't hurt me.

[slurp]

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

### ONE SUNDAY A LONG TIME AGO

Four windows down and seventy miles an hour. Buzz Lightyear rode alongside twelve-year-old Da'Ndre Turnipseed in the breezy back seat of the crazy car. The little action figure and his human buddy were crammed together for the vacation, sitting in the middle of a Matthew Brady battlefield of dead chrome wheelchairs and worn-out hardshell Samsonite.

As the family crossed another state line, young Da'Ndre closed a translucent golden plastic window, about the size of a postage stamp, on a Travel Bingo Game card. "I win," he said, "I got Bingo."

Dixie fired up a doobie, toked deep. "Yeah," she smoke-croaked over her shoulder to the boy, "we rigged it that way." She held up her Bingo card. All her card's little yellow windows were still open.

"Hey! We went through West Virginia," the boy said, pointing to his momma's card. "You didn't close the little yellow window over it. You didn't even play."

"Why would I play?" the boy's mom said, "You think we don't know where we're goin?"

"It's called _destiny,_ boy," Andre said, taking his eyes off the road to stare at his son for an unusually long duration. "Shit gonna happen and ain't a fuckin thang you can do about it."

Dixie passed the joint to Andre with a practiced finger tut. Andre plucked the joint from her fingertips, sucked until it railroaded straight through a prime bud, and wondered how he was going to explain the dynamite plan to his sweetheart. She didn't know shit about it. _Lost the trunk key,_ was all he had told her, and when she said _let's get another one,_ he got so pissy she just said _fuck it, we'll go on the trip without using the goddamn trunk, why should I give a shit?_

"What are you so nervous about?" Dixie asked.

When boiled like chewy chitterlings in an angry black man's revenge stew, without external advice, consultation, or psychotherapy, plans like the one he had cooked up seemed bulletproof, at least to its sole proprietor. But during the drive south, Andre discovered the opportunity to sullenly muse upon the variables, the trees of decision, the Vegas odds, the eccentricities. _Destiny._ His once-solid logic had begun to fall apart, as if the entire idea were as ill-conceived as geocentricism, banging jailbait, or studying scripture. He wondered how much different his life would have been, had Diners Club cheerfully raised his credit limit. His mind was whirling. "I ain't nervous."

"Don't try to bullshit me," she said. "Somethin's eatin you from the inside out like yesterday's lunch."

As the southern counties ticked past, state by Bingo-card state, the mother narrated a travelogue to the innocent, curious brown lad in the back seat. She imbued him with stories surrounding the economics of manure, the vernacular architectural finesse of the lean-to, and the ingenious nigger-rigging of hillbilly white trash.

Andre knew Finkter's trap would be somewhere down here in these parts, but how deep in them, he didn't know for sure.

After a while, Dixie quit flipping the pages on the TripTik and dropped her seat back, reclining and closing her eyes. The boy laid his head down on the luggage.

Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and finally Georgia, the endless rednecks, speed traps and white supremacy dug at Andre's nerves like a burning cross. The thoughts of how his plan would pan out, whether to let Dixie in on his secret or not, since she'd just say it's fucking crazy and then what? All the possibilities of her reaction were as wild as the possibilities of just letting the plan ride out. _No, Andre honey you can't do that._ Baby we're being set up, I can't let whitey set my ass up and get away with it. _You let me and little Da'Ndre out right now_ , she'd say. No honey it wouldn't look right, we'll just step away from the car and let them open up the trunk. _But what happens if they make us stay in the car_? We'll get out anyway, somehow, we'll just get out and walk away. _What if they tell us to stop_? We'll keep walking. _What if they shoot us_? For what, for walking away? _For bein a nigger and a nigger-lover with a half-breed kid down in Georgia, what the fuck you think they'd shoot us for?_ Alright, then we won't walk. We'll run instead.

The whole scenario was mushrooming into a veritable death spiral of flame-broiled inner conflict, a Triple Whopper of heavy onion acid reflux with melted cheese food product and a dill pickle.

Yesterday's lunch.

Andre glanced at Dixie and Da'Ndre. Good thing they were both asleep.

Immediately upon crossing the bridge over the trickling creek demarcating the Shannon County line, Andre saw the cruiser. It was a black-and-white. It was idling on a deer hunter's gravel road, a cow path, really, alongside the eroded creek bed. It pulled out and tailed them from a respectable distance. It looked like a kid was driving it.

Within a mile, a second county cruiser — this one an unmarked, except with too many antennas — joined the parade from a rest-stop pull-off.

Both of them zoomed up behind him, flipping their flashing lights and sirens on at the same time, obviously coordinated by radio.

A state trooper staked out in an authorized-vehicles-only turnaround joined the chase, bringing up the rear of the lawmen's triangle.

Still unsure of his ultimate plan, Andre needed a little more time to think. So he swerved into the left lane and punched the gas pedal.

Dixie woke up, rubbernecked out the rear window. "What the fuck's goin on?"

"It's a setup."

"What you talkin' about?"

An exit appeared. Andre swerved, cutting across three lanes from the far left to the exit ramp. He barreled across dashed lines and solid whites, succeeding in tricking the kid cop in the black-and-white pursuit car into a smoky, spinning one-eighty slide.

"Finkter," Andre said. "He planted a pound in the trunk."

The crazy car leaped through the cross street against a red light. Andre turned the wheel hard right when it was airborne. When the tires bit pavement again, it skidded sideways. Andre ended up sideswiping a matching pair of perfectly restored Model-Ts driven by complete morons. Then he floored it the wrong way up the street.

"You're shittin me."

Tires of a terrified white family on their way to Cracker Barrel screeched as Andre forced them to steer their minivan into the ditch.

"Nope." Andre turned left onto an access road parallel to the interstate, and floored it again.

The three cop cars four-barreled their 427s around the minivan crackas and onto the access road, gaining on Andre's underpowered Galaxie. Dixie craned her neck around, watching the three police packages catching up. "So you just gonna get us busted?"

"I ain't quite got everything figured out yet," Andre said. "But if they manage to stop us, take the kid and get the fuck away from the car, aight?"

Little Da'Ndre lifted his head in the back seat, an imprint of the Samsonite logo backwards across his forehead. He flung Buzz onto the top of the front seat, gripped tight in his immature fist, as he sat up. "What's going on?"

Dixie fired one last toke off the roach, cracked her window, littered. "Nothin honey, you go on back to sleep."

"Hold on, woman!" Andre shouted. "Don't lie to the boy." He looked at little Da'Ndre in the rear view. "Son," he said, "It's time you know. Whitey's after us."

Andre whipped the car around a ninety-degree bend in the frontage road. The Galaxie's tires struggled to hold traction. Andre floored it again as a straightaway opened up in front of them.

As they hopped hilltops and screeched around rolling curves, Andre found himself examining the pale face of the cop pursuing him in the rear-view. He could tell that police officer was a white demon from the pits of Hades, another bloodthirsty vampire sucking the blood of the black man. He wasn't just the Lions Club or an Elk. He was the Klan. _Fuck da poe-leese. Asshole honkey whitey cracka fuzz po-po muthafucka_.

And then another cop car flew around the first one, like they were racing NASCAR. It was the State Police car, driven by a fucking _nigger_ cop. A goddamn _house nigger_ in a state trooper uniform. As if the white cops wasn't enough bullshit fucking with the black man. Some stupid mothafuckin _brotha_ , tricked by the white man to risk his life and bust other niggas and say thankyasuh when they toss slave wages at him for doing it. Slave wages they make niggas fight each other for.

Or wait — he studied the gender-ambiguous brown face in the rear view — was this state cop a _sista?_ He couldn't tell.

Andre didn't know what size of a thunderstorm to expect, he'd never fucked with dynamite. He didn't know if it would erupt from his trunk like a fiery volcano, or blow the entire Galaxie into a big bang of fun-size nuts and bolts. He didn't know how far, how much distance he would have to get Dixie and the little rascal away from the vehicle to be safe. His plan was starting to feel wrong, all wrong. He mashed down on the accelerator so he could think about it some more, just a couple more minutes. Ninety climbed back to ninety-five and then a hundred, a hundred and five. Expensive speed for the Galaxie but chump change for the trio of 427s in the rear view.

Cotton, alfalfa, and peaches flew by. An _End State Maintenance_ sign rattled in the wake of the Galaxie as the blacktop gave way to dirt and gravel. Andre's car threw up a rooster tail of white dust, giving him a slight advantage. He stared into the rear view to see how the cops were reacting to the loss of visibility. He couldn't see a thing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

### THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING

Andre shivered through the night, huddled atop the perforated steel cage of an empty auto transport car. He endured buffeting wind, sheets of cold rain, wave after wave of meteorological misery. The thin, oversize suit he inherited from the butch FBI bitch got completely soaked through. His fingers were frozen in a death grip, curled into the stamped pattern of the train car's grid of circular holes.

Seventeen years inside a cage and now he would give his left nut to get inside the empty steel box he was riding north on. Just to get out of the wind, hunker down, find a little shelter from precip, just a little relief was all he needed. But — God Bless America, Andre thought — whitey's got enough steel to make as many cages as he wants to lock niggas inside, and even more steel than that to keep all the niggas out of where he don't want no niggas to be in. Whitey so fucked up, he'd pay good money to keep a nigga outa somewheres, even if that place wasn't even bein used for nothin else. He'd do it just outa spite.

The train chugged at a variety of speeds, ranging from hours-long stretches of absolute zero to brief moments of locomotive alacrity, an occasional velocity so inspired that the sleepy drivers on the parallel interstate must have thought they were drifting backwards. The faster the locomotive pulled, the thinner and colder the oversize FBI suit became. It was soaked through with rain, and flapped on his back with the effectiveness of a confederate battle flag in a Class Six hurricane. Andre's penis had been so frightened by the FBI bitch's attack and the subsequent intense chill, the little thang probably looked like a Georgia conch in a Motor City snowstorm.

The exaggerated circumference of his sleeves became the leading edge of a wind tunnel, a freon funnel gulping air like a starving snake swallowing a live rat. The whipping chill refrigerated the hair of his sweaty armpits to icicles. It frostbit his innocent nipples. It denied all sources of warmth and comfort, going so far as to evict a bright orange puffball of nylon lint from the depths of his belly button.

When the train moved, Andre cursed the cold. When it stopped, he wept for a roll of the wheel, to move him closer to his destination, to reduce the duration of his misery. For three entire dark morning hours, Andre shivered as the long train sat dead still on a siding.

He watched as perishable items passed him by on another train, headed northbound: refrigerated boxcars of fruits and foodstuffs. One car even had its door cracked open, revealing a rolling Garden of Eden. It was fruit porn, passing Andre's empty, growling stomach at twenty miles an hour, flaunting its unreachable feast toward Andre's starving eyes like the most beautiful stripper in all of Hell.

But at least when the trains passed in the other direction — southbound — Andre could tell he was headed in the right direction. The repetitive blinking images of auto transport cars, loaded with brand new SUVs headed to the white doctors and white lawyers and white politicians and all the other privileged honkey crackas down south, reinforced that he was on the correct track, headed north toward the Big Three factories. And toward his woman.

The sun promised relief as it peeked above the horizon, waking Andre from his fetal freeze. His fingers were stiff as rocks, frozen around the cold steel plates of the railroad car's exterior. The wheels were clacking in a subsiding beat, slowing to the erratic frequency of arbitrary mortars pounding a war zone, an appropriate set of detonations to complement the feeling inside his skull. He squeegeed his eyeballs and visually scanned the industrial hellscape. He saw a misty, smoking railway yard festooned with the rust of abandoned freight cars, worn out lengths of dead steel track, and hollow creosote chips liberated from rotten ties. Broken windowed factories, rotten brick, crumbling cinderblock. Rusty razor wire lay uncoiled atop chain-link fences, no longer necessary to protect long-abandoned warehouses. It was a rust-belt panorama, miles-long stretches of human failure, like a North Korean economic improvement zone.

Andre's crusty black nostrils inhaled the fibrous scent of asbestos, the fetid odor of grease-clumped powder windblown off oil-soaked soil, and a random mixture of his own dermatological stench and methane-flavored gut gas. The neighborhood beyond the factory – rolling fields of utilitarian barracks for semi-skilled labor freed from the battlefields after World War II — appeared as a burned out, post-apocalyptic graveyard of dreams, an abandoned ghost town devoid of union wages and prosperity, its once-healthy youth relinquished to decay, erosion, entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.

Detroit, Michigan. The Promised Land.

Andre was home at last.

The train's corroded forged steel couplings pounded in succession as the three locomotives braked and then accelerated to the speed of a toddler's crawl. The serial metallic thump created an illusion of animation as it passed back and forth underneath him like a robotic relay race.

Andre reviewed his immediate environs, searching for an appropriate place to jump off. Up ahead, he noticed a hobo ankling his way through the irregular, mutant fists of granite piled alongside the railroad tracks, a ghostly apparition idly shadowing the tracks as if he were en route to a soup kitchen, Salvation Army flophouse, or soul-sucking career as a guard at Aberdeen State Penitentiary.

As the train gained on the hobo, Andre saw the man was eating a plum as if it were magical pussy. The fruit's pink juice was bleeding from his hand onto the filthy, diesel-stained coal dust of the railroad yard. And this hobo, slobbering over such a feast like a middle eastern monarch casually deflowering a string of village virgins, was a fugitive in an orange jumpsuit, a filthy lawbreaking jailbird out on the lam. Andre had seen so many of those orange suits for so many years, he realized he thought everybody wore them everywhere, every day. It never dawned on him that it was an unusual sight in a railroad yard.

The fugitive bastard casually slung the plum's pit – still covered with half the fruit's flesh – onto the ties under the moving train. This was such a dismissive gesture of carefree wealth that Andre's gut burned with fury. And then the hobo had the audacity to jam another plum into his mouth as if he were a cop slurping down a free donut.

When Andre finally caught a glimpse of the hobo's face, he became a father who was yet again disappointed by his only son. He leapt from the top of the tall railroad car and arced through the sky, his arms outstretched like an attacking bird of prey, on a trajectory directly toward the hobo's buckwheat mini-dreads.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

### TO BE READ ALOUD

This street, that street, how far must I roam?

Back there, up here, where is my home?

When will I smell home...?

When will I hear home...?

When will I see home...?

I.

Found.

Home!

I.

Found.

Emily!

I.

Found.

Emily Rutkowski's K-9 Academy!

[wag]

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

### DEATH

A piercing yelp of terror penetrated the floorboards like a strangled latex balloon. It was a profoundly hideous screech that emanated from the necrotic netherworld between West Hell and six feet under Satan's Pet Cemetery.

The horrid overture occurred just as Gaia discovered that Bama's nest was empty, with the exception, of course, of the putrid Purina. The kibble had been dissolved in canine belly acid and ejaculated onto the dog's truck-stop Indian blanket. Even though it stunk like a whore's bedsheet, the little dog's binge and purge had become a comforting routine that brought a sense of purpose to Gaia's life.

A scuffed aluminum inspection plate appeared to have been scratched open. It looked like the desperate nails of a condemned prisoner had ripped an escape hatch out through the metal curve of the wheel well. There was a slot barely large enough for a bald, ostrich-egg head. The double tires and the pavement below were visible through the hole.

Gaia sensed that a sentient being — completely illiterate in every method to ensure its own survival except the most basic of instincts and involuntary movements — had escaped. "Stop the bus!"

JC panic-stopped the old rig within three rotations of the drive wheels. Now the loping diesel engine was the only sound.

Gaia wiped condensation from the foggy rear window, cupped her hands, and peered outside.

Seventeen irregular crimson blotches were stamped onto the blacktop of the church parking lot. The bloody squish marks were a diagonal connect-the-dots, hellish impressions that led straight to the back of the bus like a murderer's footprints.

"Bama!" Gaia bolted out the door and shrieked in horror at the sight of poor Bama's remains, wedged between the dual rear tires like a hunk of spam. She fell to her knees and wept like a coed at Kent State.

JC set the air brakes and ran outside to comfort Gaia, but he had to momentarily turn away to conceal his euphoric relief. When he collected his demeanor, he approached Gaia from behind and massaged her shoulders. "Jesus called him home, babe."

She twisted violently, throwing her arm around, knocking him backwards. "Jesus did not do this and I am not your babe, goddammit!"

"Gaia...are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?"

JC's wife spun back at him with icy eyes. "Shut your holy hole, goddammit!"

"Yet not one of them is forgotten by God." He examined her expression, searching for evidence that doubling down on scripture was a decent bet.

"Fuck you and fuck your goddamn Bible and fuck your goddamn song and fuck this goddamn retarded bus and fuck this whole goddamn stupid tour! _I hate my fucking life!_ "

The little corpse flopped out from between the double tires and made a splat on the pavement. Its eyes were wide and encircled with black. Its skeletal tail was striped from the roll of the tread. For just a second, Gaia wondered if it was really her dog, or if they had run over some sort of exotic miniature raccoonoodle. "Is that really Bama?" she asked.

JC didn't answer. He didn't have to. The cute little canine with the egg head and tender tummy stared back at them from the other side.

Gaia wailed like Mary at Gethsemane.

JC stepped forward and flipped the dead meat over with the stick. "I wish we had time to give the little rascal a proper funeral," he said. "But we gotta get on the road, honey."

Gaia looked up. She was already drowning in the second stage of grief. _"Fuck. You. Asshole."_

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

### THE RUNAWAY

Finkter penciled hatches on a legal pad like a Neanderthal doing arithmetic. He filled an entire page as he banded Benjamins and carefully stacked them in precise rows inside his wall safe. He was doing a super neat job, as if the safe were a dollhouse, and he was a one-eyed prepubescent girl with OCD.

Skip-skip-swish.

Finkter paused, cocked his ear, a stack of cash frozen in his hand, fanned like a proud peacock's royal flush. He wasn't expecting any visitors to his office at midnight.

Skip-skip-swish.

Finkter hastily shoved his cash into a makeshift pyramid, corralling it into the center of his conference table so he could make a stand and protect it if necessary. His lone eyeball searched like a wild animal on high alert for impending danger. He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket, consoling himself by alternately exercising the hammer of his trusty little derringer and fingering her little hair trigger. He crept to the conference room door and peeked around the corner, down the hallway toward the front reception area.

Skip-skip-swish.

A gimpy silhouette loaded the front door's window, an unusual figure with a limping, apelike gait. The shadow of the figure's flabby arm reached toward the front door buzzer.

BZZZZZZZZ.

"Mister Finkter! Mister Finkter!" The silhouette punished the door frame with the butt of his fist.

Finkter snuck alongside the hallway wall, his derringer at the ready. "Who is it?"

"My daddy told me if I ever needed anything, you was a good man."

Finkter gripped the derringer's handle in his fist, cocked her hammer, wrapped a finger around her trigger, and then opened the door to the extent of its security chain.

"Mr Finkter?" the gimp said, leaning on his short leg like a statue of Saddam Hussein about to topple. He had one leather dress shoe on his good foot, but only a dog-eared white sock on the deflicted one. "You remember me from my daddy's funeral?"

"I remember you from when you was a little boy," Finkter said.

Earl Finkter opened his door, took the naïve young fugitive under his wing, and set him up with a washrag and cot in the office basement like he was hiding a Jew from Nazis.

# # #

The next day, the fraudulent attorney drove Ex-Ray Dingledine down to the prescription cobbler, where he purchased the felonious lad a brand new set of mismatched wingtip loafers to level his erratic stride. One was a regular shoe and the other was modified with an elevator worthy of the Empire State Building.

Young Ex-Ray Dingledine could not stop his chin from trembling when the Jewish swindler unveiled the pair of $1700 shoes like they were a black leather lap dance. His composure broke when Mr Finkter nodded acceptance of the huge price tag to the big-nosed shoe salesman. He openly wept as the slippers were slid onto his unusual tootsies. He wept until snot dripped onto his crotch. He wept for his fricasseed father. He wept for his dead twin brother, and his poor lonely, junkyard mother, saddled with their retard brother. He wept so much, he even ended up weeping for himself, his own loss, his own humiliation, and how his father had died, still disappointed in his twin boys and the retard.

Ex-Ray Dingledine knew he was simply an innocent, limping young man who society had unfairly labeled as a criminal, a felon, an evildoer. Society didn't give a shit about him except to put him in jail. There was no public record that told the true story of how he and his brother had got busted by the state cops with certain items borrowed from their dad's evidence locker. The twins were never even allowed to testify in court how they had spit-swore to each other that they would return everything they had borrowed, just as soon as they had the money to buy back what they had sold. Nobody never wanted to hear the truth.

"I ain't never had a new pair of shoes, not since I was a kid," Ex-Ray managed to sniffle between sobs. "They feel so good on my feet, Mr Finkter."

"Well you just help me out a little when I need some things done, aight?

"I will sir, I will."

"I want you to make yourself at home down in that basement."

"I will sir, I will."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

### THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING

Dino-burning beasts were cranking hard on I-95 North and South. Da'Ndre avoided the road. He forced his way through a jungle of palms, Venus Fly Traps and assorted succulents that thrived on the moist South Carolina air and the automotive carbon lurking alongside the interstate. One of Da'Ndre's eyes was nearly swollen shut by poison ivy. The crack of his ass was lit up like a blunt with every step. His sex organs felt like a swarm of termites was eating them.

He wanted to lie down and rest some more. But when the FBI car had exploded, he knew he needed to get away from there as quick as he could, however he could.

The freight train rolled at the snail's pace of Da'Ndre's maximum limping sprint. One of its fruit car doors was ajar. The opening looked just wide enough for Da'Ndre to jump through.

He ran alongside the open door, but the banging coupling and screeching wheels of the massive machine were intimidating. Rotten ties groaned death knells under irrepressible tons.

Every car was as indifferent to Da'Ndre's personal suffering as the illiterate desert nomad's invisible psychopath in the sky. Why, Da'Ndre thought as he stumbled along beside the train in an orange jumpsuit with clinking shackles, why did this _God_ son of a bitch want to fuck up his life because some dead guy he never even knew was tricked by a talking snake and a piece of hot pussy into eating a goddamn apple? That was like six thousand years ago. Dude really knows how to hold a fucking grudge. What the hell did Da'Ndre do to deserve all that shit?

He aimed his torso toward the open door and jumped. He leveraged himself aboard like a middle school gymnast on a balance beam, and then he rolled into the center of a heavenly, fruit-scented buffet. He felt like a radical Islamic terrorist who just woke up in heaven with his seventy-two virgins. Orbs of red, green, purple and yellow, visible through slits in waxed cardboard, were chilled for shipment by an overworked refrigeration unit bolted to the roof. Its cooling coil was frozen solid, encased in a block of white ice of its own manufacture. The car was actually toasty warm from the short circuit in the freezer motor.

Da'Ndre ripped into the fruit. He sated his gustatory lust over the course of the overnight hours as the train itself ate hundreds of miles of track without stopping. Apples, grapes, passionfruit, kumquats, plums, strawberries, kiwi, jackfruit — Da'Ndre gorged until he was as replete as a hog in an industrial force-feeding lot. Between bites, he tried the keys his dad had tossed to him until he was finally free from all the jewelry. He soothed the burn of poison ivy with fruit juice squeezed directly onto his eyelids, wiped across his genitals, dripped into the crack of his ass and all over his wrists and ankles where the shackles and cuffs had rubbed his skin raw. He unabashedly engaged in a fruit orgy. His face and jumpsuit became adorned with pulp, seed and drool. For Da'Ndre to have indulged in another mouthful would have been utter vulgarity. So when he awoke in that massive, smoking railroad yard at dawn, wherever in the fuck he was, he grabbed a few more for the road and hopped out.

Walking along the tracks, Da'Ndre was simply minding his own business when he innocently tossed a plum pit, and then, as he bit into his last plum, he noticed with his peripheral vision a distorted image of a flying object. It was a silhouette made unusual by its position in the sky, temporarily suspended, as if defying the laws of gravity. He saw a snapshot, a frame from a video. It was an airborne Rorschach inkblot, an irregular, semi-symmetrical outline stamped against the crisp golden and blue dawn. Whites of eyes emerged from the center of its head, eyes shot through with crimson lightning. They grew from the shadowed face like the time lapse bloom of a rosebud, as the flying black figure in the oversize suit enlarged, expanded, flew directly toward him. It issued a piercing cry that grew to the volume of a riot megaphone, until it smacked into Da'Ndre's head with the exact same kinesis as the locomotive pulling the train.

"D-A-APOSTROPHE VINCHY MUTHAFUCKA!"

The deep black attack — the soaring intrusion into Da'Ndre's solitude — struck hard and perfectly on its intended bullseye, resulting in a painful triple roll over the escaped coal nuggets and rejected spikes that littered the train yard like craters dotting the moon.

Da'Ndre managed to stagger back to his feet, and then he immediately took the offensive by setting upon his father. He grabbed the leg of his old man's stolen FBI suit and dragged him across the filthy detritus. "I done told ya, da Vinci ain't got no goddamn apostrophe you old black-ass mothafucka!"

Andre fought his way loose from his son's grip, and continued to kick the air as a deterrent while crab-walking across the granite. He didn't stop until there was enough distance between them to prevent another altercation. "If da Vinci ain't got no apostrophe, then you ain't got no fuckin sense."

One of Da'Ndre's eyes was bugged out; the other was completely swollen shut. The poison ivy was killing him. The depths of his cheek pores were pink and engorged, threatening to invert themselves from pure blood pressure. "You come out of the joint so smart, so real fucking smart," Da'Ndre said to his father. "What you do for seventeen years? Did you ever read a fucking book?"

Andre stood up, brushed himself off. The FBI badge he inherited sparkled in the sunrise against the subdued background of the federal shirt, which was streaked with blood, grease and coal dust. "This way," he motioned to his son, then turned his back and started tramping away.

"I ain't followin you nowhere," Da'Ndre said. "You're a fuckin nutcase and momma's dead anyway, I know it."

Andre turned around. "Who told you your momma's dead, boy?"

"Everybody."

"Who's _everybody?"_

"You wouldn't know em," Da'Ndre said.

Andre spun back around and continued walking away without looking back.

Da'Ndre gazed around the panorama of the train yard. "Hey!" he shouted, trotting to catch up with his dad. "Hey!"

Andre stopped, swiveled his head around.

"Are we in _Detroit?_ "

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

### TO BE READ ALOUD

I see the fear

I hear the fear

I smell the fear

That's him alright

Right across the goddamn street

That puppy stealin mothafucka.

(growl)

CHAPTER FORTY

### FRIDAY, AROUND MID-DAY

Da'Ndre followed his father up the stairs and down the hallway. He tried walking pigeon-toed to keep his ass cheeks from rubbing the poison ivy raw, but unfortunately that tactic only exacerbated the flame of friction on his gonads. So instead he tried impersonating a pigeon-toed bowlegged cowboy. That seemed to work slightly better. He followed his father as the old man rambled down the third floor hallway, memory-mumbling, his knuckles tapping apartment numbers, door by door, not knocking but counting, until he abruptly stopped.

"You remember this place?" Andre asked his son.

The walls were grimy, painted with leaded semi-gloss, the color of pond scum. An overcoat of motor city's airborne petroleum stuck to every surface: doors, ceilings, the snoring lump of filthy rags on the floor. A multilingual cacophony blared from seventeen TVs in surrounding apartments. Real life domestic disputes tripled the ambient noise.

This was a safe place for Da'Ndre's soul.

"Yeah, kinda," Da'Ndre said. He was excited to think that he was really here, in his childhood home. Every step he took might be moving him one step closer to the mother he had lost so long ago. "Where's momma's crib?"

Andre pointed his bony finger like a witch doctor's magic stick. "Shhh." The old man slipped his back against the wall, put his palms flat against the oily avocado. He crabbed, creeping until he was beside a door. It had been busted open, cracked at an odd angle. The black father tilted his ear to listen. The son slid up beside him and peeked around his dad.

"Smell that?" Andre whispered. He gave the broken door a suspicious push at arm's length. It yawned like a waking lion. A slice of light stabbed the cluttered room, illuminating a rebel flag crucified on the drywall by half a dozen ten-penny nails. A chlorophyll acrylic bong was knocked over on a cable spool table, lying dead in its own nasty water. An arc of chrome-spoked wheelchair peeked around the door frame, exposing the curve of its gray rubber tire.

"Reefer," Da'Ndre whispered.

"Naw, not reefer," Andre said. "This place always smells like reefer. I'm talking about powder. Gunpowder. Don't you smell it?"

Da'Ndre sniffed. "Yeah, yeah, now I smell it."

"Look at the deadbolt," Andre said, pointing to the exploded lock.

"That's what we heard when we was down the street."

"Look at all the neighbors staring at us."

Da'Ndre scanned up and down the hallway. A scattering of doors were open. Seventeen inquisitive minority faces peered at him like the letters of a half-solved Wheel of Fortune puzzle. Even the snoring bum had erupted from underneath his pile of capitalist freedom to blink at them. He was the only Caucasian face in the bunch.

Distant sirens entered their consciousness.

"We got two minutes tops, boy."

Andre rapped his knuckles on the apartment door. "Dixie," he said, "Dixie you there?" His voice returned intact, a solid echo, unabsorbed. He tenuously reached out, pushed the door open. "It's me. It's Andre, I'm home baby. Home at last."

As the door opened, it revealed supine soles of goth black lace-up army boots on the floor. Long, thin pegleg jeans led from the boots up to a bubble derriere, an erotic ass in tight denim laid out flat on the floor.

"Dixie, you alright?" Andre asked the hot ass. Then he turned and offered a critique to his son. "Look at that goddamn onion, boy. Yo momma ain't changed none in seventeen years." He poked his toe on the sole of one boot and pushed, shaking the woman, but it was to no avail. She was a sleeping princess.

"Oh shit," Da'Ndre whispered, pointing at a red trickle pooling at the threshold. "What the fuck is that?"

Andre cautiously pushed the door open, checking the apartment for danger, then took a step inside.

The body was face down, an African-American woman with a two-inch neo-fro, a perfect spherical halo except for a chunk on the left side matted down flat by a lump of gelatinous blood. There was a sledgehammer, a smart phone with a busted screen, and a pistol on the floor beside her.

"What the fuck?" Andre said. "This bitch ain't my Dixie." He knelt down beside the body. "This ain't yo momma." He lay his ear alongside the bloodied hair that was matted around the young woman's face. "I can't tell if she's breathin or not." Then he rolled the woman onto her back, cradled her shoulders, and balanced her head in the crook of his arm. "Who in the fuck is this sista that got iced in my house?" He wiped the blood away from the limp woman's eyes, and then glanced from her rope-burned throat and beat-up face to his son's rash-swollen eyes. "I don't have any idea who the fuck this bitch is."

Da'Ndre gulped, staring at the woman's bloody face.

"This is _our place_ ," Andre said, "me and your momma's, and yours, too, when you was a kid, remember?" He nodded around at the furnishings, pointed his spare thumb over his shoulder toward Da'Ndre's old room, where Da'Ndre's Toy Story poster was still thumbtacked crooked over the single bed. "This is all our stuff, mine, your momma's, and yours. Ain't it?"

"Yeah, I remember it."

"You got any idea who this is?"

# # #

It had been just another Saturday night, except once a month, Mr Marblee gave Da'Ndre a whole night off to chase pussy. Plenty of strange came to the parks, the fields and the parking lots that Marblee Amusements temporarily enlivened with their glowing electric happyland. Working for Marblee Amusements was like being a rock star, except without the hassle of performing on stage.

The young lady had been the perfect mark, a bitter and vulnerable combination of lonely, bored, horny, stood up, let down, abused.

Old Cavantino pretended to be annoyed when the sexy lady won a prize at the BB arcade, even though he had swapped out the usual target for thin newsprint, boosted the air pressure on Da'Ndre's rifle and extended the shooting time until Da'Ndre could prove heroic. Cavantino chatted her up, telling her how handsome her boyfriend was while giving her the choice of stuffed animals. He prodded her with leading questions until she said _he's not my boyfriend_ , and then _where did he go?_ before he encouraged her to find her handsome hero and thank him for his selfless chivalry.

The young lady was fine, the shape of her vaginal walls the perfect fit for Da'Ndre's erect penis, a penis that had remained hypersensitive since recovering from the belated shock of Hebrew tradition. Her hips swiveled at the perfect angle to complement his curve. Her rhythm was as unique and erotic as the disco resonating through the Marblee Amusement's woofers. He would have kept riding her for hours, but when he noticed the kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl pointing at them, he had no choice except to explode.

To refer to their brief minutes together as _raw dogging_ would be vulgar. Her pussy was absolutely electric. Da'Ndre didn't remember most of the women who had shared their bounty with him, but this one, he did. That shit was lit.

# # #

Da'Ndre knelt down, took over holding the woman's shoulders and head. "I might know her, kinda, I think," he said. "But I don't have any fucking idea how she got here."

Andre relinquished the bleeding woman to his son and stood up. A can of pork-n-beans shouted Andre's name from inside the kitchen cabinet where they had been imprisoned for seventeen years. He freed the can from its cell and immediately decapitated it with a dirty ginsu knife from the bottom of the dishwater. He shotgunned the beans straight from the can, swallowing them whole without chewing, like they were OE8. He could tell his son knew the woman by the way he was stroking her hair. The sirens got a notch closer, like they'd turned a corner. "Give her a kiss right now if you're gonna do it. We got sixty seconds."

Andre spied a nearly empty soft pack of Parliaments, yellowed with age, reclining on the coffee table alongside a butt-filled ashtray. The pack's foil was torn open, no doubt by his very own hand some seventeen years prior. Three soldiers lay half out of the pack. He picked one up, ran it below his nostrils, stale and stiff with rigor mortis, barely clinging to their ancient vapor. Menthol. That's why Dixie never smoked them. A flame flickered from the orange Bic. He blew smoke in the general direction of the woman in Da'Ndre's arms. "You gonna tell me who she is or what?"

The child's shrill accusation split the two men's breasts like Colonel Sanders' meat cleaver chopping cheap chicken. "WHAT YOU DO TO MY MOMMA?" the little niglet shouted. Her hair was braided tight to her scalp, infested with a colony of multicolor plastic hairclips.

The father and son gazed into the six-year-old brown girl's face. It was a face that might have been the image on a trick mirror at Marblee Amusements, or a youthful, miniature, reverse gender version of their very own visages. "I AXED YOU, WHAT THE _FUCK_ DID YOU DO TO MY MOMMA?" The little girl stood in the doorway, hands on hips, in flannel PJs with feet.

The two men shifted their gazes back and forth between the girl's image and each other's eyes. Andre was surprised to be comparing a familiar genetic theme, and noticed that his son appeared to be similarly stunned by the familial resemblance.

From outside, there were sirens arriving, shrieks of skidding rubber, and shouts, regimented shouts of command and coordination, teamwork and determination, that washed over the building like a clarion call from the very creator of the universe.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

### EARLIER THAT MORNING

The bullet hole was different this time. Usually, bullets invaded from the street below while everyone was sleeping. They'd break through the brittle single pane glass with a steeply angled trajectory that popped them directly into the ceiling at an acute angle. Launjeray was used to those.

What made this bullet hole different was the bloody booger of slimy meat, a capillary-enrobed BB of bleached white fat. It was a necrotizing biopsy rolling down the flat lacquer, the off-white neutral apartment grade color that complements any tenant's furniture or body part. The little booger weaved its crimson way between the curly peeling paint chips, leaving its sinister trail like a secondary road in a Rand-McNally atlas, gravity-loping a ten-inch stain from the hole in the plaster until it finally gelled to a sticky halt like an engorged mosquito slapped dead on the wall.

It was as if the hollow point T-Bone had loaded into his pawn shop semi-auto had been startled by the flesh pressed against the barrel — like it was shot through sardines in a Tokyo subway car — that it neglected, completely forgot to mushroom while tunneling through the pork-enhanced tallow of T-Bone's back. It remained intact, cylindrical, conical. It spun without expanding even as it nicked a rib, scooped a hunk of lard into its single nostril and begat a split-second warning itch that grew into a burning wildfire even before the bullet finally ricocheted off the drywall and splintered in four directions like a Blue Angels air show, leaving its bloody pellet to crawl away like a wounded yankee soldier.

"C'mere, woman," T-Bone had said, the dreaded misogynistic command, historically backed by a predictable choreography of violence that over the years Launjeray had attempted to avoid, with mixed success, through a variety of rational, emotional and physical explanations and contrivances. "Why you make me go out for pussy, woman?"

"I'm busy," she had said, stuffing his pistol into her pocketbook as he relentlessly pounded the opposite side of the locked bedroom door with the pudgy pink butt of his hairy fist.

"You ain't fucked me in six months," he said through the door, an unbecoming whine.

"Yeah, and I ain't startin now," she said. "I'm gettin ready for work."

"You don't need that goddamn ten-dollar job," he said, an edge of anger in his voice.

"I'm dedicated," she said. "You wouldn't understand."

It only took him three kicks to bust through the plain butt-fugly hollow slab bedroom door. It was nothing more than two pieces of glorified cardboard, brush painted and glued to a cheap balsa wood frame, before T-Bone purchased it right then and there with Launjeray's security deposit. And then he was on top of her, pinning her down on the bed, drooling his Red Rocket slobber on her bra, ripping at her Victoria's Rumor's panties, one hundred percent manmade material, rope-burning her thighs, finally penetrating the folds of her privates with random digits, any of the dirty, pudgy fuckers he could force inside.

She struggled, slapped him, twisted and planted her elbow hard on the lump that bobbed on the corrugated tube of his trachea.

"What's wrong with you, woman?" He reared back and popped the orb of her left eye with his right fist, his strongest punch, reserved for self-defense, revenge against contrary inanimate objects, and special romantic occasions. It had become an all-too-familiar pattern.

Launjeray's eyesight momentarily doubled and then her vision dimmed on the left side, so she was able to draw a single focus on his gray streaked beard, his cherry bubble gum cheekbones, his double chin and bloodshot eyes.

He unbelted, unbuttoned, released his gut, thrust his greasy jeans down around his knees. Then he caught sight of the devious glint of his own shitty pistol, speeding toward him in his brown girl's white knuckled grip. "What the fuck are you doing with my gun?"

She didn't even realize she had a hold of it. She didn't remember popping the safety. She had no recollection of avoiding his defensive slaps and squeezing the trigger. But she did remember how his lungs squeaked a tardy protest, and how the semi-auto's slide self-racked with the atomic explosion, how it sliced a pair of parallel slits across the web of her thumb knuckle as it spun the spent casing, smoking, spiraling to the ceiling with the force of a slingshot, ringing like a discordant tuning fork as it bounced into her packed suitcase.

The vivid stench of gunpowder combined with T-Bone's merciless howl and the flood of his uncorked blood unleashed Launjeray's emotions. Bitch's hammer was cocked for revenge and T-Bone knew it. He scrambled away and fell to the floor in a heap, his pants around his knees, his midsection naked, his dick shrunken. He scampered, leaving a rosy trail leading into a corner where he cowered, twisting around to examine the extent of his wound.

Launjeray stood up, aiming the pistol at him.

"It's got a hair trigger, sweetheart," T-Bone said, displaying his palms as if they were Kevlar shields. "Be careful, honey, don't point it at me like that!"

She spit directly onto his widows peak, once wasn't enough, twice, the second one landing in his right ear canal, ejected from her lips with the nasty wild spite of a desert nomad's camel, a male camel with balls the size of coconuts. The junky pistol was loose in her hand, no longer aimed at him, now casually threatening the apartment below as he curled up into a submissive position like the whimpering pussy he was. She snorted, hoiked a third, hypermassive loogie from her smoker's lungs to her clogged sinus, rolled it phlegmatically over her tongue, and glared years of hatred at the bully, the fucking asshole, eyeball to eyeball. She inhaled, preparing to spit.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter. T'Whirl was standing in her flannel PJs with the feet in them, watching the altercation through the broken down bedroom door like it was an educational skit on Sesame Street.

Launjeray reconsidered. She swallowed the loogie without spitting it out.

# # #

The apartment building's walls were sticky and green, like day-old guacamole. Launjeray walked underneath a bare bulb and chased her own lengthening shadow down the noisy hallway. The multilingual din of televisions, first-person shooters and live crying babies threatened to occlude her mental focus. But court was coming up in a few days, and she'd had enough of her bullshit life of slave-wage spying and domestic abuse.

T'Whirl deserved better.

Launjeray was determined. She watched the shadow of her sledgehammer, gripped in her leather work-gloved hand, as it grew to Thorlike proportions, exaggerated across the floor in accordance with her distance from the naked incandescents in the ceiling, one after the next.

She paused outside the door, propped her sledgehammer against the nauseating asparagus-piss semi-gloss plaster. She leaned over for a close look at the worn doorknob to estimate its strength, and was taken by surprise when she caught sight of her own reflection in it. The curve of the brass knob exaggerated the bruise T-Bone had awarded her just an hour before. She saw an orbit of alarmed blood pooling around the circumference of her left eye socket. Palm grease on the tarnished metal softened the focus but there was no mistaking the darkness of ruptured capillaries and subcutaneous clotting, along with the accompanying puffy pillow of fluid pinching her swollen eyelid.

She thought of T'Whirl, innocent, oblivious, underdressed for the cold spring evening in her cheap flannel PJs, even though they had the feet sewn right into them by Guatemalan sweatshop labor. No doubt her little girl was shivering in the spring night chill, outside in the dark Voyager, alone and afraid in the creepy parking lot. She steeled herself for battle. This was for a better life. This was for T'Whirl. She couldn't keep on living this way, she told herself. She couldn't bear another month, week, day or even hour trapped in this circling spiral, this maelstrom, like a refugee on a raft, riding a toilet flush right down into the sewer. This would only take a minute and then it would be over. Then every little thing would be alright.

She examined the apartment's original contractor-grade door for weak spots, cracks in the veneer, previous damage. She decided to attack the deadbolt with a direct hit. She pressed record on her smart phone's video camera, propped it against the hallway baseboard, and readied the sledgehammer for a horizontal adrenaline burst. She wound up like a major league batter in the World Series, and smashed the old hardwood door with the eight-pound iron head. She pounded three strikes, expecting the dry, decades-old wood to splinter from floor to ceiling, but she got nothing. She kicked with her black military boots. She jerked, beat and thrashed at the handle with her hands, to the extent her fake nails would allow, but got nada.

Having no other choice, she reached to the waistband of her pegleg jeans and extracted the phallic nose of T-Bone's pistol from out of her panties. She aimed and fired at the deadbolt, until splinters of steel ricocheted from the cloud of gunpowder, and the lock's metallic guts lay dead on the floor like a jigsaw puzzle after a child's tantrum.

A wild-eyed white dude popped up like a jack-in-the-box from inside a pile of rags. Seventeen neighbor doors were opened. Curious eyeballs peeked into the hallway toward the ruckus.

Launjeray picked up her phone and stepped inside. She swept the room with the barrel of T-Bone's pistol and the lens of her cell phone, still capturing video. She stopped sweeping when they both pointed at Dixie Clippens.

The fat redneck woman sat calmly in her chrome wheelchair at her cozy eat-in kitchen table. She had a rebel flag napkin tucked into the cleavage of a clashing stars-n-bars sports bra, both of which were catching drips from the fried pork chops and boiled collards she was chewing. On her plate was a partially eaten ear of corn that revealed her predisposition for bucking the social norm by biting a corkscrew round it, instead of the standard typewriter paradigm.

"You must be the nice lady with the insurance company," Dixie said as if they were meeting in a spa, dentist office or Parisian whorehouse.

"I'm freelancin now," Launjeray said. "I'm here to get my cut."

"Well, I'm busy eatin," said Dixie. "Want some greens? I got plenty." The fake cripple gently pushed a Corelle bowl of mush two inches toward the intruder, as if she were a polite party hostess.

Launjeray's gun barrel quivered ever so slightly, but never drifted from its main target. "Stand the fuck up outa that wheelchair, goddammit."

Dixie picked up her half-eaten corn cob and scooped kernels off it with the feline incisors that Jesus had crowded at the tip of her pointy jawbone. She ate around and around that cob to show her complete lack of concern. Then she sucked the stray corn mash into her talk trap. "I said I'm eatin, bitch." A single, semi-masticated kernel shot from her lips, tracing a creamy arc onto the back of her hoary forearm. "None of what you're gettin on video is admissible anyway."

"I can edit it." Launjeray kicked Dixie's shin with the toe of her black boot. "Stand the fuck up."

"Aight then," said the repulsive woman in the wheelchair, "suit yerself." And to Launjeray's surprise, the fat white rebel bitch put her hands on the duct-taped arms of her tarnished chrome chair and pushed herself up, right up out of her seat, and all the way up onto her feet. Then the crazy fraudster started dancing right in front of her, dancing the cha-cha like a cartoon bear, snapping her fingers like a Tijuana hooker while clucking out a stupid rendition of _Sweet Home Alabama._

Launjeray captured the video that was her key to cash in. This was the video that she could deep six in exchange for a hundred large, or maybe five times that much. Fuck the measly bonus from the detective agency. Now she could flip the deal and blackmail the scammers, and get her cut of the take.

And then the lights went out.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

### FRIDAY NIGHT

Detroit was Mars. Da'Ndre had no idea where in the hell he was at, or where in the hell he was going to. He was a fugitive on the run. He would have been just another nigger in niggertown, impossible to spot in a crowd, except he was still clad in the Georgia jail jumpsuit, highlighted in orange like a special verse in the Bible. He could have ditched the suit, but then he'd be running in sneakers and tighty whities — not exactly invisible dressed like that, either.

He dashed down dark alleyways, scaled chain links and outran backyard pit bulls.

Cop cruisers prowled concentric circles, radioed backup, and pursued, relentlessly pursued him like he was a runaway slave.

He figured his dad was either running, too, or was already handcuffed in the back of a cop car, or was dead. But at least if his dad was still on the run, he would know the lay of the land and have a chance of geographically outsmarting them. Da'Ndre didn't know shit about Detroit.

Just then, Da'Ndre spotted a heavenly glow on the horizon. It was exactly like his eighteenth birthday, his first day of adulthood over a decade ago, when he was confused, abandoned, spit out by the system with nowhere to go. He found himself drawn toward it just like last time, like a moth toward the flame, or whatever it was, for no rational reason except just because there was light. He was simply following the light out of pure faith alone.

Could be this summer's traveling Marblee Amusements show, they came here every year. This is where he first met that bloody, unconscious woman with the familiar-faced kid.

Could be a construction site, or a shitty used car lot, or maybe space aliens had landed.

He had no fucking idea what he was heading toward.

He crawled under a fence and dashed halfway across a six lane interstate, dodging moderate traffic with a sporadic sprint. He hopped jersey barriers and attacked the opposing trio of lanes, freeballing a life-validating ballet, stops and jerks, a palm thrust at screeching tires, a final vault and clamber through a gully choked with weeds, beer cans and a pair of pre-owned spiral ribbed condoms.

Flashing blues appeared from both directions as he stamped fleet-ass footprints over a muddy berm, the light on the horizon a little brighter, a little closer with every step.

He kept running toward the light.

He ran beyond his natural endurance. His fingers, eyes, crotch, taint and crack of his ass were all bubbling and weeping from the poison ivy's relentless blitzkrieg. Lactose cramps ripped his aching hamstrings. Deeply inhaled industrial particulate lit fire to his bursting lungs. Freight car fruit fraternized in his colon like a Rodney King riot.

A swirl of squad cars corkscrewed the freeway's cloverleaf and floored it along surface streets into the neighborhood, leading his sprint like a quarterback's bomb as he bisected the ass-end of the rust belt's buckle. He booked it through a failed retail strip mall, along a block of boarded up bandos, past dead jalopies on cinderblocks. He fled toward the halo that was cresting the peak, the mysterious electric evening sunrise.

Cop cars screeched around corners, gunned engines directly toward him, while even more of them raced down parallel streets to box him in. Da'Ndre didn't blame them for what they were doing. He knew that the cops chasing him were, like most all other Americans, only a paycheck or two away from their own economic shame, bankruptcy, divorce, failure. He knew they were just trying to delay the inevitable, the lonely humiliating treading of the icy gray ocean of debt and despair, trying not to drown, trying not to sink into the depths of homelessness and starvation. Just like everyone else, they were desperately grasping for something in that vast capitalist ocean, anything at all that floats: a busted styrofoam cooler, a ripped hunk of stray lumber, a pregnant silicone vagina — even a job as a cop, constantly throwing other people into the abyss just to satisfy the beast and save their own skins. Stay alive, just stay alive, one payday at a time. One little fuckup, one little step out of the corporatocracy, and any one of those cops would be just like him. Broke-ass broke and running from the man.

It was a dead end street with a slippery wooden fence blocking the exit, eight feet tall, rotten and slick with mold. Da'Ndre clawed his way face-first over the summit, using his very last ounce of strength.

He fell to the ground, finding himself inside a massive parking lot packed with cars, buses, vans, pickups, RVs. He sat up and took a quick inventory of his personal assets. His muscles were exhausted. The webs of his fingers were swollen with fiery bumps, histamine eruptions as irritating as if he had engaged in naked raccoon wrestling in a red hot split-level attic filled with pink fiberglass insulation and studded with shingle nails. He had mega jock itch; his balls had been teabagged into a volcano. Rash bit his ass crack like flames on a propane grill. His tongue was as dehydrated as Saharan sand.

He stumbled to his feet, a miracle of will power. His eyes were blinded by a Las Vegas Strip of light, a bank of circling kliegs surrounding a wall-to-wall jumbotron proudly pixelating a rasterized burnt-toast image of Jesus Christ himself, and underneath, an alphanumeric crawl.

Da'Ndre realized he recognized the gleaming glass megachurch from some random round-the-world with a Comcast TV remote, or maybe it had been on the internet, or some stripper's widescreen back tattoo. Maybe someone had showed him a picture of it, some hopeless superstitious sucka caught up in prosperity preaching, or one of the gypsy fortune tellers at Marblee Amusements. How in the hell could he know? All he knew was, he'd seen the place before.

He paused to gulp it down, this televised holy palace, sacred and huge as shit, probably bigger than Jerusalem, Mecca and the Vatican all put together. He had no idea this place even actually existed in real life. And then it hit him.

The brochure.

"TONIGHT.....EVANGELIPOLOOZA...........TONITE.....

...EVANGELIPULOOZA....."

The cops were getting out of their cars in the parking lot around him. They were shouting something, but Da'Ndre didn't hear them. He heard a drum beat. He heard music. Heavenly music from the Lord. Christian Rock. Never before had he felt happy to hear that shit.

He raced through the parking lot with renewed courage and strength, past dashboard Jesuses, anti-abortion bumper stickers, ichthus-adorned trunk lids. He zigged and zagged toward the safety of the sanctuary, as if it were base in a children's game of tag, ducking and running as more police cars screeched into the lot, surrounding him with headlights and blinding blue strobes, and ever more cops jumped out to join the chase.

He busted through a ragged hole in the cops' perimeter and sprinted into the megachurch through welcoming doors, pursued by an entire squadron of Detroit's finest.

He hurdled the ticket taker's revolving gate, split the team of well scrubbed young Christian ushers, and dove head first into the milling crowd, a lone fleeing orange-suited fugitive, a chocolate chip swirled into a tub of holy, forgiving vanilla yogurt.

A familiar ditty echoed from the glass church's octagonal walls. "Jesus wants me to loooove you..."

Da'Ndre's head snapped toward the stage, and he saw the Reverend JC Pagans, looking just like Da Vinci's uncle from the old painting in that famous Italian church. The fake deity was down on his knees, crooning his disingenuous serenade, fingering his keys, and inappropriately swiveling his hips toward a few hundred feminine fans on the cusp of puberty, half of them sporting boob buds and the other half as flat as JC's non-autotuned vocals. "Jesus wants you to love me, too... Come on everybody sing along!"

Da'Ndre spotted Gaia on the drums, her eyes closed, her expression serene as she rolled a steady reverse heartbeat, the Satanic foundation of AC/DC's negative influence, now doing the Lord's work. She angel-voiced the background chorus, using the Mormon Tabernacle Choir filter on her own voice synth.

Da'Ndre glanced over his shoulder. The cops were pushing their way toward him. They had him in sight and were gaining. So Da'Ndre cajoled his way through five thousand true believers, drawn toward JC's Warriors as if they were the sole conduit for his escape, his only hope in the entire universe, his saviors.

The cops closed in. Da'Ndre arrived at the foot of the stage, disoriented by the decibels, trapped between undulating tweens and ululating speakers.

The adoring girls were a solid, unmoving wall. Hundreds of passionate pilgrims flowed from the seats above, pushing and shoving to worship JC as close to the stage as they could get, utterly enraptured by the enrobed, musical deity-doppelganger as he tossed his wavy, shoulder length brown hair, thrust his Christian-style hips toward their braces, and keyboarded his way into their tender young hearts.

Da'Ndre ducked, dropped onto his hands and knees. He crawled through adolescent shins, weaving around ugg boots and flip-flops until he found a hiding place behind the black pleated stage skirt. He examined his options, then found himself scrambling between the stage supports, scampering toward busy ankles working the rear of the venue.

There was a pause in the song, an elongated, simmering chord. Tweens muttered the chorus in sync to move the song forward. "Jesus wants you to love me..."

A chant rose from the rear. "Jay-sus Prai-sers, Jay-sus Prai-sers, Jay-sus Prai-sers!" The older male crowd was demanding the next band.

Da'Ndre could see blue uniformed legs running back and forth along the width of the stage front, and cop heads peeking underneath the stage skirt. He found a larger support beam to hide behind. The song's pre-pause chord warbled into silence as chants for the next band grew louder. Even some of the prepubescent peggies in the front row joined the call for The Jesus Praisers.

Da'Ndre crawled out from underneath the stage, stood up and brushed himself off. Looking around, he found himself backstage amidst stagehands, riggers, best boys, grips. He gave them a nod and topped it off with a non-threatening-negro yas-suh-boss grin. To his surprise, they all returned his smile, winked and nodded in affirmation. Three of them even flashed white people's fake gang signs in his direction.

A producer strutted past in a black leather miniskirt, hot pink lips matching an I <3 JESUS tee, a wristful of bangles worthy of Solomon's six hundredth wife. It could have been a woman, but Da'Ndre didn't know for sure. "Love that costume," it said to him, adams apple bobbing, checking Da'Ndre out head to toe before consulting a clipboard. "You're on next."

" _Me?_ "

Da'Ndre felt a fist grab the collar of his shirt from behind. A huge fist, a monster cop fist, a skyscraper crane of a fist. He looked over his shoulder, expecting to find security, a real cop, maybe even an actual skyscraper crane, because the force was pulling him so hard, so phenomenally hard, but absolutely nothing and absolutely nobody was behind him, much less someone or something that could have grabbed him by the collar like that. The invisible force lifted him, worked his legs like a marionette along the backstage concrete slab with such perfect domination, it was like a hydraulic arm on Marblee Amusement's Pukemaster 5000, the sadistic rotary device that would spin five entire corndog-stuffed tons of human flesh like Satan's centrifuge.

Da'Ndre felt light on numb feet, like he was walking on a cloud, supremely high on life. The invisible power guided him, lifted him up the stage stairway. More stagehands smiled, nodded, gave him thumbs up. One guy blew some finger tut in his direction. It was either an inappropriate heartthrob hookup gesture, or some proprietary Christian Jesus fish sign, Da'Ndre couldn't tell. One dude on the crew, in ragged blue jeans and sporting a wicked case of cross-eye, kinda looked up from tuning a neon blue Strat, gave Da'Ndre a huge grin, and then held the guitar out toward him. He then pointed onto the stage and said, "Your mic is right there, Mr Nimrod."

"Naw man, this can't be right," Da'Ndre said. "I got poison ivy in my eye, between my fingers, I can't play nothing like this." But when he held out his spread fingers, there was no poison ivy, not on his fingers, not in his eyes, even his taint and ass crack felt back to normal. He grabbed his balls and tested. They had been transfigured. "I been healed," Dandre said. "I BEEN HEALED!"

The unseen force wrapped Da'Ndre's fingers around the neck of the guitar. The strap went over his head and onto his shoulder. He stumbled onto the stage in a daze, still hidden from the audience behind the curtains as JC and Gaia were banging the climax of their song.

He peeked through slots in the tall curved booming bank of speakers and saw thousands of white Christian Rock fans surrounding three sides of the projecting proscenium. He saw JC, still down on his knees, his pelvis thrusting to tempt the underage, fingering the tease riffs of his signature song's chorus leading in to the abrupt but sensitive, drawn-out, melodramatic, romantic, and visually pornographic ending, especially for the moms who could envision something so freaky nasty.

"Jesus wants youuuuuuu...toooooooo...."

Gaia spotted Da'Ndre and immediately killed JC's autotune. When JC belted the song's final three syllables, it sounded like they were croaked by a reptile. His raw vocals were so awful, it must have buzzkilled every moist vagina in the entire adolescent audience.

Then Gaia's voice reverberated through the palatial glass cathedral. "For our last song, ladies and gentlemen...please welcome our new guitarist... _NIMMMMRRRRROD!_ "

Da'Ndre saw Gaia motioning him onstage. A God-ray backlight shone on her, creating a corona around the braided flaxen locks encircling her crown in an angelic fashion. Her breasts were erect. Outlines of nipples were suggested through her waif's white hippie sundress. She was just like an angel would look in heaven, if the angel pounded skins.

"I _knew_ you'd show up!" She shouted to him off-mic. "Fantastic costume!" She gestured him toward his own God-ray, a brilliant spotlight illuminating a mic on a stand, awaiting his vocals. Gaia spun her sticks like batons before cranking into an intro that was the unmistakable riff they had invented around the campfire.

Da'Ndre puffed his chest and emerged from behind the wall of speakers. The lily white sea of Caucasia reminded him of his old middle school lunchroom, except these whiteys literally gasped at the sight of the brown man in the authentic orange prison suit, scraggly beard and a dreadlocks starter kit. He was a real criminal, a genuine felon, an honest-to-goodness gold-toothed concrete jungle gang-banger now onstage alongside a mediocre impersonator of Christ Jesus himself. Was he a real fugitive? Or was it bullshit? The dude was filthy! The irony of Jesus onstage with a real live negro inmate gripped the young audience by its faithful sex organs like a vibrator with brand-new alkalines, and the giant Christian coliseum fell silent with anticipation.

JC jumped up from his knees and stomped back to the drum kit, leaned across a stand of e-cymbals to shout into Gaia's face. "No! We've busted our humps for three years to get here, Gaia! We're playing our new song, goddammit!"

"This _is_ our new song, Jonnie," Gaia replied softly, without missing a beat. "So get your ass out there and let's make it work."

"He's in a prison suit! I told you he was a criminal! Didn't I? I told you he wasn't a real cop!"

Da'Ndre approached his mic. He gave a sidelong glance to JC and Gaia, who were now arguing through Gaia's analog brass tinkle tubes. "This is a little song we call _Peaceful Sundays,_ " Da'Ndre said into the mic, surprised by the resonance of his voice reflecting throughout the interior of the megachurch.

He began strumming the chord progression they'd played around the campfire. He could hear the crackle of the burning wood, the beat of Gaia's palms and fists on the hollow conga log, but everything was now perfectly tuned and amplified for an audience of thousands. It was the fulfillment of their unified imagination, now made real for him and for her, simultaneously. He tried to peer into the crowd, to check out what the cops were doing, but the lights were too bright in his eyes.

He put his hand up and blocked the glare. When he scanned the crowd, he felt peace, energy, a wave of unconditional acceptance. Maybe that was _love,_ he thought. How the fuck was he supposed to know? He'd never felt real love before.

Gaia rolled into a signal riff and then stopped drumming.

JC continued to stare at her, heat of anger rising from his emerging bald spot.

"Peeeeeeeace...fuuulllll Sundaaaays," Da'Ndre sang, running through notes as if he were improvising an orgasm in the Star Spangled Banner. The young white crowd was mesmerized by the negro man's soul voice. Gaia motioned for Da'Ndre to repeat, then punched out a reggae backbeat as a test.

"Peeeeeeeace...fuuulllll Sundaaaays," Da'Ndre repeated, throwing in a couple dozen more notes.

The crowd went nuts for the authentic Motown sound as Gaia drummed and JC stood there staring at her, paralyzed by his anger.

"J-C-J-C-J-C-J-C-J-C!" the crowd chanted.

"Pee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-eaceful Sundaaaaays..."

"J-C-J-C-J-C!"

And to this day some say an actual halo glew over JC's head, floating like a magic flat top haircut, centering itself like a trick flying saucer with his every involuntary twitch and myoclonic jerk. He busted out a smile so big, he let everyone in the entire audience see his embarrassing bunny teeth. He switched his keyboard to Bob Marley's clavinet and began bubbling it opposite a vibrato ocarina setting, cycling one against the other with both hands while simultaneously layering in a deep, hard techno bass line and haunting samples harmonizing across the rhythm. His fingers flew across that keyboard, flipped switches and twisted pots. Some say divine inspiration enveloped him, and, to his own surprise, he improvised a chord progression that, he would repeat many times over the ensuing years, no bluesmaster in the history of mankind had ever explored. It was as if he were speaking in tongues with his keyboard. Like he was high as shit and Jesus was the drug.

And Da'Ndre Percy Sledgehammered it, freeballing lyrics from his own divine inspiration.

"Don't want no lawnmowers..."

"Don't want no leaf blowers..."

"All I want is...Peaceful Sundays..."

The ten-minute jam was lyrically repetitive because nothing decent rhymes with lawnmowers and leaf blowers except snow blowers, and that's just repeating the same word, blower. And then what's left for the theme of the song? Chain saws? Like how many people get out on a Sunday and cut shit up with chain saws? So there was really nowhere to go with it, lyrically.

Fortunately, however, Da'Ndre was aware that Burning Spear had already pioneered the art of cannabis-inspired repetition within the reggae beat, and rap had survived for at least three decades with a minimum of rhymes for _bitch_ and _ho,_ so he just repeated his Seussian freestyle, over and over again, without shame.

After seventeen repetitions, the numbnuts crowd finally learned the words and joined in. Ruddy-cheeked, ponytailed, corn-fed midwestern tweens — an avid text-voting bloc — pushed toward the stage, chanting the song like junior varsity cheerleaders.

Trophy housewives nibbled nails and sucked on french tips as they watched Da'Ndre move, dance, sing and pick an exuberant lead solo. Half of them appeared concerned, perhaps about inappropriate, racially confused idol worship that might intoxicate their fair daughters. Jesus air-fucking them was one thing. Falling in love with a negro was something else entirely. The other half of the moms appeared to be wondering what it would really be like to go black, just one time. A couple of stay-at-home dads were tapping their toes in time, both of them no doubt imagining the same scenarios as the horny moms.

The cops reconnoitered, advancing toward the stage, pushing through the growing crowd of tweens, thousands of them now, who turned into an impassable wailing wall.

"All I want is....come on now, everybody sing with me!"

The crowd joined Da'Ndre over Gaia's heavenly backup vocals.

"Peacefullllll Sundays...!"

Two beefy, steroid-enhanced motorcycle cops, one black, one white, ran from opposite sides of the stage, simultaneously crunching Da'Ndre from either side, one at his shoulders, the other at his knees, an NFL-style ambush that twirled Da'Ndre into a flying pretzel.

There was an instant of utter silence as the music abruptly cut like it was unplugged by the power company. The speakers cracked and went dead. The entire megachurch held its breath. Da'Ndre involuntarily pinwheeled above the crowd, levitating over the stage, outstretching his arms and legs until, for one fraction of a second, he was an airborne cartwheel, an orange and brown da Vinci man with a neon blue electric guitar.

From the minute he was born, he never realized his soul was an empty vessel, until the heavenly spirit stopped the earth from spinning, stopped time altogether, emerged from the stage lights, appeared before him, and filled him in that split instant with His boundless love. Da'Ndre realized it was Jesus who had led him to this place at this time, and now it was God the Father Almighty Himself, the ethereal Holy Ghost or whatever, oozing from the spotlights in this blessed megachurch like a genie from a brass oil lamp, and spoke directly to him, with a magic voice so only Da'Ndre could hear.

"Your mother is dying," God Almighty boomed. "Hurry your fuckin ass up, nigga."

And then there was the bittersweet slap of an escaped felon's cranium on the black plywood stage floor, the embarrassing stain and fragrance of a fruit shart, and the crude explosion of Fender humbuckers that murdered the material silence with a discordant twang.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

### HOLED UP

One-eyed Finkter jogged down the rickety steps into the unfinished concrete basement, wearing his gray pinstripe mobster suit, plugging the ass end of a brown-flavored donut into the biggest hole in his fat old face. He stopped in the glow of the dim bare bulb, its filament as primitive and yellow as Thomas Edison's laboratory. "Lemme give it to you straight, Miss Dixie," he said, his teeth creme coated, stained the color of shit. "Your old man is coming to kill me and you are gonna help me get him first, before he gets me."

"He ain't my old man," Dixie said, her glutes aching, nipples gasping, claustrophobic and suffocating in a spandex stars-n-bars sports brassiere unnaturally stretched across her chest as if it were a boa constrictor. _Spencers Gifts Revenge_ she called that bra, and if she ever got enough money, she was gonna buy herself a new sports bra and burn this piece of shit once and for all like it was a witch. She suspected she was growing a blood clot in at least one of her tightly bound titties, if not in her right thigh, which was exploding like a marshmallow in a microwave. Her right foot, forced into an acute angle beneath her bulk, had swollen into a phlebitic nightmare as rotten-red and big around as a grade-school kickball with glitter on its toenails.

"Your job is to keep Andre from fucking this up," Finkter said. "If you can do that, I'll cut you loose with a wad of cash so big, you can open up that fruit stand you been talking about."

"Don't you fuck with my dreams," Dixie said.

"I'm talking a hundred thousand dollars profit in this for you," he said. "You just make Andre keep it cool, that's all."

"I been on food stamps for seventeen years," she said. "I don't believe a goddamn word you say."

"If I tell you I'm gonna cut you in for a hundred thousand, then I'm gonna cut you in for a hundred thousand," he said. "I want you to have an incentive, Dixie Clippens. I want out of this hellhole as much as you. One more big payout and that's it. All you gotta do is keep Andre from fucking it up."

"Let's sign a contract," she said, "just to make it legal."

"It certainly would be helpful, Miss Dixie, if you would just tell me where Andre might be hiding out right now."

"How the fuck should I know? He never wrote or called or nothin. He don't give two shits about me."

"Well then I'm afraid I can't offer him any help," Finkter said.

"He don't need your help for nothin."

"Well unfortunately, Miss Dixie, it seems your long-lost beau has spread a thick swath of crime across the land from the moment he walked out of the prison to wherever in the hell he is right now."

"You're lyin out yer ass," Dixie said. "Andre ain't never hurt nobody he didn't have to."

"Well probably not," Finkter said. "I'm sure he's innocent. He's only wanted for murdering a sheriff down in Georgia," and with that he swiveled his head and leveled his eye, his glass one since he thought it would be more convincing than his living, bloodshot one. He just had to hope and pray the dead one was pointing in the right direction. "Murdering a cop with a bomb, jailbreaking, grand larceny, theft of federal property, arson, crossing state lines and public masturbation."

Dixie swallowed, visibly shaken. "You are so full of bullshit," she said. "Andre wouldn't get involved in no public masturbation."

Finkter snapped his fingers, a signal to a shadowy confidante who clomped out of the shadows on cue. Surrounded by a generous cloud of Old Spice, the greasy gimpy dude — the murderer that garroted that nigger insurance bitch — shuffled into the skimpy light, holding a stuffed, dusty pillowcase like it was mediocre proceeds from a botched suburban branch bank robbery. His white shin-hi socks were stuck inside an unbalanced pair of brand new shiny black wingtip loafers.

When Finkter nodded, the gimp dumped the contents of the dusty old pillowcase onto the piss-stained mattress, smothering Dixie's pink and purple knees with envelopes. Dozens of them, maybe even hundreds. A pile of letters, each and every one of them SWAK from Aberdeen State Penitentiary.

"Oh, he's coming for ya, Miss Dixie," Finkter said. "We just gotta make sure he don't fuck anything up in court tomorrow and the rest of the goddamn week, right?"

Dixie tugged at the duct tape for a closer look at the letters. Finkter shoved the pile of paper around her lap in a toilet-like vortex with his brown tasseled calfskin loafer, and then he spread them like they were mayo across Dixie's thighs. The gimp joined him, clumsy, barely keeping his balance as he defiled the prison-born billet doux with the dirty elevator sole of his ugly prescription loafer. Dixie watched the toes of the two assholes as they picked, poked, and mercilessly molested the envelopes across her knees. The colors spanned the range from antique yellow parchment to brilliant white, all stamped, all postmarked, and all bearing Dixie's name and address: the same place where she had lived for twenty-three years, the same place where she had lived with Andre until he got incarcerated, the same place where she had lived with her baby Da'Ndre until he got took away at such a tender young age, and the same place where she still lived, 1717 East Tubman Street #13, on the ragged, shifting edge of the ghetto, and she stayed there all these years because she was hoping one day she'd get her life back, her family back, her man and her boy back.

Each envelope was chicken-scratched in Andre's unique hand, an olde English cursive that resembled a prison tattoo. Each one had his corrections-compliant return address in the upper left, and here and there, they were stained with irregular spots, perhaps sprinkles of dried salt water. Dixie could feel Andre's emotion pulsing through her loins as the letters were spread across them. She had no idea Andre was such an epistolarian. She squeezed her eyelids to squelch the rising anger that threatened to saunter down her cheeks. "How come I never got these?"

"Don't you remember?" Finkter asked. "You signed the restraining order. Everything intercepted. No calls, no letters, no nothing." He spun, giving her a solo bug-eyed gaze, this time with his bloodshot eagle eye. "Don't forget, you have an excellent attorney, Miss Dixie."

"Zat why I never got to talk to him when I called the prison?" Dixie asked. "I just signed what you told me to. I trusted you."

"Hey look at this one," Ex-Ray said, squatting crookedly, snatching up an aged envelope adorned with folk art ink pen drawings, kindergarten hearts pierced with stick-figure arrows and DC+AT=TL scrawled inside them. The gimp grinned stupidly at Finkter; he was a total fucking asshole. "Can I open it up and read it, Mr Finkter?"

"Don't you open that fucking letter." Dixie strained at the duct tape.

"Go ahead, Ex-Ray," Finkter said. "Read it out loud so we can all enjoy it."

The shape of Ex-Ray's mouth animated like a giant soap bubble let loose in a southern breeze. It was a big, wiggling circle. His tongue stuck out one side like the tail on a Q as he focused all his mental energy on examining the envelope for the perfect place to start ripping it open.

"Don't you open my mail, asshole."

Ex-Ray whiffed the envelope, then ran it back and forth under Dixie's nose like it was a hand-rolled Cuban. "Mmmmm," he said. "Smells like it was perfumed...did he spray some Right Guard on it?" He held the envelope an inch from the tip of Dixie's nose and ripped the short side open right in front of her crossed blue eyes. He licked two of his fingers all over like he was having oral sex with soft-serve ice cream. Then he popped the envelope open into the shape of a vagina and plunged his slobbery wet fingers deep into the virgin parchment.

"You motherfucker," Dixie snarled, stretched to the furthest extent the duct tape allowed.

Ex-Ray slid the private love letter out, opened it like he was the town crier. "Aberdeen State Penitentiary, 900 West Aberdeen Road--"

"Start with _DEAR_ you dumb shit," Finkter said, pointing over Ex-Ray's shoulder at the word in the letter.

"Oh yeah, okay, uh, _DEAR_ ," then he stopped to romantically gaze into Dixie's eyes. "Dear Dixiepoo..."

"Dixiepoo?" Finkter guffawed.

"Dixiepoo!" Ex-Ray hooted.

"Alright, that's enough!" Dixie thrashed at the duct tape. "You read another word and I'm gonna turn state's evidence against both your asses first thing tomorrow morning you sorry ass motherfuckers!"

Finkter put his alcoholic's nose near hers. "You would do no such fucking thing," he said. "Cause you got too much to lose. Now where is he?"

"Yeah," said Ex-Ray. "Where is he?"

Anything could happen in the last few days before court, Dixie knew that. Tensions were high. They always were. Two years of rolling around in a goddamn wheelchair to put on this fucking fraudulent act, and there was no way she was gonna blow it now, not when they were this close to finished. None of them would jeopardize the plan, not Finkter, not this fucking gimp, nobody. This one was going to go down like all the others, except this time, Dixie was gonna get enough to get out of this business, once and for all, so she could finally retire to some beer can of a mobile home down in the Keys, run her fruit stand, drink top-shelf bourbon whiskey and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd sing _Free Bird_ over and over all day long if she wanted to.

Unless — and she had to admit to herself that Finkter could be right — unless Andre fucked it up.

# # #

She'd just been minding her own business – poke sallet, pintos with pork knuckles, cornbread, corn on the cob, sitting in her wheelchair inside her own apartment, that's how dedicated she was to Finkter's scheme, still sitting in her wheelchair even in the privacy of her own home — when the nigger insurance bitch shot the door open like she was a one-woman swat team, leveled her pistol right between Dixie's titties, and videotaped it all with her cell phone.

"Stand up, bitch," the negress had said.

"I can't," Dixie remembered telling her, plaintive.

"I done shot a muthafucka just a few minutes ago, right in tha back," the crazy bitch said. "And I fucking loved it. Now stand up, cause I gotta go, my little girl's waitin outside in the car. _Stand up out of that goddamn wheelchair I said!_ " And then the bitch kicked her hard, with her hard leather army boots, right on the front of her shin bone.

It was at that moment when Dixie saw the gimp sneaking up from the hallway behind the insurance bitch, the clumsy, clunky gimp who couldn't do anything without making a bump, thump, belch or fart, the stink-ass sweat-soaked Old Spice gimp who couldn't sneak up on any unsuspecting victim even if he was riding a magic carpet, unless he was approaching Helen Keller from behind and downwind.

"Aight," Dixie told the crazy nigger woman. She put her hands on the armrests of her wheelchair as if preparing to stand up, just to hold the bitch's attention for another half a second until the gimp could work his magic. She knew she could smash the bitch's phone to pieces once the gimp did his job.

And then, Dixie thought, trying to piece together the bare facts from conflicting emotions, as she was dancing a jig for the cell phone video, that gimpy motherfucker went a little overboard. He garroted the nigger bitch, iced the bitch right there on Dixie's own goddamn apartment floor, left her lying in a pool of blood on Dixie's brand-new _WELCOME!_ mat, then turned his violence toward Dixie herself, twisting Dixie's arm until the Arabian sword she had got inked on her forearm down at Myrtle Beach when she was seventeen (before she had fully established her confederate tattoo theme) was kissing her brand new tramp stamp (a pair of General Braxton Bragg's cannons, cross-aimed at both her kidneys) and then the gimpy motherfucker left the bitch's phone, sledgehammer and bloody gun right where they were laying, and hustled Dixie's ass out of her own apartment, leaving a crime scene that was evidence enough to send Dixie's rebel-tattooed ass to some hardcore murderer women's prison for life, where she'd be forced to worship Allah and scissor with nigger lesbos.

At that moment she realized Finkter had his hair trigger on high alert. He was probably gonna station the mad gimp outside the courthouse first thing in the morning to ambush Andre, to keep him from talking, because why the fuck _wouldn't_ Andre show up?

And at that moment, when the gimp was shoving Dixie down the hallway against her will, Dixie actually hoped to hell Andre would show up and save her ass like Superman, even if it did fuck up the court case.

# # #

"Dixie, honey, sweetheart, I'm going to leave you under the supervision of Mr Ex-Ray if you don't mind," Finkter said. "He's gonna help get you ready for tomorrow's appearance."

Finkter shuffled up the stairs. His feet sounded like sandpaper blocks, lazily sliding onto each tread with a gritty, timeworn swish. The light from upstairs illuminated a slice of airborne dust, then shrank to oblivion as Finkter slammed the cellar door shut. He accented the finality of his exit with the metallic sniptwist of a deadbolt.

Alone with the tied-up rebel bitch, Ex-Ray flipped an empty five-gallon paint bucket upside down to make a stool. He sat on it, then stared at Dixie with a contemplative look of wonder, like a child looking at an animal at the zoo, and wanting to fuck it.

Dixie stared back at him, angry and defiant. The cellar got so quiet as the two of them skunk-eyed each other for so long, that a lone cricket decided to risk his very existence with a tentative chirp. The insect's solo expanded into a chanson sung by a kinky cootie love triangle. Still, the two criminals glared at each other. Dixie may have even dozed off, she couldn't tell. Time became irrelevant in the darkening dungeon.

"You want some water?" Ex-Ray finally asked, so softly he didn't even disturb the cricket tabernacle choir.

"Yes, please," Dixie said. "That would be nice, thank you."

"Aight," Ex-Ray considered, rubbing his palm in a circular motion around his patchy chin stubble like a rotary buffing machine on an elementary school floor. "What you got to trade fer it?"

"Trade fer it?" she said. "Not a goddamn thing with you, ya fuckin pervert."

"I lo-o-o-o-ove me some fat-ass rebel pussy," he said, "all tied up and nasty as hell." He took a half-clomp toward her, reached to run his fingers through her long gray hair, but she ducked. He was pissed. "I saved your life, woman, so you owe me somethin for that." He kicked off his mismatched shoes and unbuckled his Harley belt. "You gotta look all sorry and wounded for the jury tomorrow," he said. "Mr Finkter done told me all about how that works."

He dropped trou and self-massaged his little thang until he caught a whiff of an SBD that Dixie had unsuccessfully attempted to contain. He appreciated the aroma of Dixie's pheromonic tootiebug; his pecker perked up like he was a devout televangelist high on a double dose of Viagra while downloading child porn. He cautiously approached the big hogtied woman, a normal step and then his signature, the huge dipping hobble, like a bride walking down the aisle. He extended his dominant shaking paw toward her left breast. It was an experimental idea, so he hesitated. "You like a younger man?"

"Not one like you." Dixie shrank away and curled up as best she could.

He pinched at her thigh like a bedbug, apparently believing such a dick move was erotic foreplay. He displayed his crooked yellow teeth directly to her face in the dim light, showing her a sort of anticipation, or constipation, Dixie couldn't tell which. His forced grin was followed by a hyperbolic look of surprise, his breath shed waves of prison-grown oral thrush from the depths of his omnivorous throat.

He pinched his way up Dixie's thigh to her ass cheek. He lay down behind her and spooned his erect penis between her healthy glutes, snuggling in tight.

But then Dixie suddenly hefted both her legs over his head, spread her thighs as wide as the filthy parts of the kama sutra, encircled the gimp's neck, and put him into a surprise stranglehold so persuasive that he voluntarily flipped onto his back when she twisted his head around with a quick, cracking jerk.

Dixie made that son of a bitch eat forty pounds of hogtied rebel muff as she clamped down on his ears and shoved her callous-coated heels into his spine. She flipped him over again, flipped him like a fried egg, and raked his naked dick back and forth across the corroded metal sewer drain in the concrete floor. She ignored the pain from her own hands, blown up to bursting like pink and purple water balloons from the constriction of the duct tape wrapped round her wrists and the steel pipe she was taped to.

"Mmmmmffff!" Ex-Ray said, trying to catch his breath like a stupid kid drowning in a muddy pond at summer camp. But his nostrils were wrapped tight, oxygen-starved by Dixie's labia majora.

"I ain't lettin go of your sorry ass til your face is the color of Sherman's uniform, you son of a bitch," Dixie said.

He tried to bite her, but she responded with fierce retribution, flipping him back over again and pounding his skull against the concrete floor with tectonic pelvic thrusts. His waving arms and punching fists were ignored; his pathetic squeaks were drowned in the lips of Dixie's pussy as she curved his backbone in reverse underneath her corpulence, jamming his pointy nose into her sex crack for so long, he finally ceased beating at General Bragg's cannon and quit kicking his gimpy leg. Eventually, his strong leg shivered in death's grip and he fell silent and still.

She released her thighs just enough to allow the loser to load his desperate lungs with a generous spirit of methane that she liberated from her last healthy lunch of pork barbecue, brussels sprouts, pintos and boiled cabbage. And then she closed up on him again.

She smothered him another five full minutes before pounding the entire weight of her Walmart grocery gut down on his sorry ass. She rode his head like a bucking bronco until she heard three distinct sharp cracks, and then poor little Ex-Ray was moaning, half on the rancid mattress and half on the concrete floor, half alive and half dead, like a baby deer had crawled into the ditch after being run over by the Google camera car.

The deadbolt clicked, the door opened and light streamed in like a slice of lemon icebox pie.

"Next," Dixie said.

A mumbling moan originated from the crumpled heap. "I can't feel my legs no more, Mr Finkter."

A human body tumbled down the stairs amidst a pair of airborne flip-flops. It slap-landed on the concrete beside Dixie. Its eyes were wide, its face was exhibiting surprise, its breath was unmistakably Whopper. For an instant, Dixie thought she saw a ghostly image of her very own handsome young common-law husband — her Andre — before the door closed and darkness ruled once again.

But she realized her eyes were playing tricks. This unconscious heap couldn't be Andre. This body was chestnut brown and younger than Andre. Andre was black as an African mandingo and he would be a lot older by now. Andre would never allow himself to be treated in such a fashion. Not only that, but he would never wear flip-flops, nor ever be caught dead in plaid Ralph Lauren walking shorts and an AEROSMITH t-shirt.

The new body didn't move. It just lay still on the concrete as if it were knocked out.

"Don't leave me with this bitch from hell, Mr Finkter!" the gimp moaned. "My back's broke! I can't move!"

The gimp's cries were answered by the sound of a lock snitching shut on the door above.

"Mr Fiiiiinkter! Don't leave me down here! Mr Fiiiiiiiinkter!"

Dixie crawled in the dark like a blind crab itching for a fight. She stretched the duct tape as far as it would go. She groped toward the whimpering piece of shit with her toes, found him and latched on with a supernatural curl, a pedi-grip that she utilized to drag the helpless man's broken body close enough to do more damage.

As her pupils readjusted, she caught a moonlit glimpse of fear in Ex-Ray's eyes, the sulfurous glint of his incisors, and the glitter of her own toenails as she discovered his windpipe with her clot-swollen foot and laid down on it with all her weight.

"No, no, no...!"

Ex-Ray tried in vain to escape, but in the end, Dixie made the little wannabe rapist shut the fuck up once and for all. As his protests petered out, she prayed to God that the hellbound bastard would hear her parting words, the most egregious, ego-bruising, and humiliating of insults that could be hurled at a backwoods Georgia hillbilly. "That'll teach you," she said to the expiring cripple, "you fuckin _yankee."_

As soon as Dixie knew the gimp was gone for good, the new body on the cold cement floor rustled. It probably stood up. Dixie couldn't see very well in the ever-darkening cellar.

"You better not fuck with me," Dixie Clippens told the stranger.

A frail, disembodied voice — a man's voice with the emotional resonance of a child's — emanated from the ghostly silhouette in the darkened cellar. "You're not dead," the voice trembled. " _You're not dead!_ "

The smell of chewed onion, hydrogenated french fry and cheap, flame-broiled fat invaded Dixie's nostrils as she sensed the stranger approaching, heard his shuffling feet, saw the shadow of his arms extended wide, inappropriate for a strange reverse wigga as a greeting to a hogtied woman in a dark cellar. So before the weirdo could touch her, she launched her swollen size eleven and disabled his sorry ass with a swift, masculine kick directly to his delicate nutsack, and followed up with a shinbone to the forehead that laid him out, stone cold on the concrete.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

### REFLECTIONS

Da'Ndre knew they didn't have to put him in no lineup. If they had any information at all, they could lock his black ass up forever. He figured one of these other four niggas did something in Detroit, some local crime, no doubt some petty bullshit. These cops were punk-ass bitches. They were just using Da'Ndre as a fill-in on a lineup while they were figuring out what to charge him with. They were delaying.

When they led him into the lineup gallery with the other four men, he figured there was a pissed-off doctor's wife on the other side of the wall of one-way mirrors, some elderly white socialite woman trembling in her mink stole, with a purple bruise where her bracelet used to be.

The other four brothas held their heads up tall even though they were in orange jumpsuits just like Da'Ndre. Their shoulders were square, their chests were puffed like Camp Lejeune. Four proud African faces stared at their own reflections with complete confidence. Even so, Da'Ndre knew one of them was gonna be a dead nigga soon as that old white woman on the other side of those one-way mirrors pointed a bony finger.

Then he turned to face the mirrors and saw his own reflection. His face was long and frowning. His chin was twitching involuntarily. His orange jumpsuit was stained and filthy. He averted his eyes. They were burning, threatening to leak. He tried not to blink and break the surface tension, but that just made his face screw up even more. He hoped he wouldn't display a feminine side to his personality.

He suddenly realized that the way he looked, he'd no doubt end up being the sucka this time. All niggers looked alike to them rich white bitches, and out of the five of them, he was the worst looking one of the bunch. He was _fucked._

He mentally reviewed his alibi in case he needed it. _Why no, suh, I couldn't have stole no white lady's bracelet, cause I was hitchin a ride on a freight train across state lines after fleein the killin of a nekkid FBI Agent. Yes suh, and that was after I was in some two-bit hillbilly jail down in Georgia where a bomb in the back of the car I got busted with drugs while drivin blew up and fricasseed a white police chief to death. Yes, suh. And that was after I went ridin around in a stolen cop car, impersonatin the police after beatin up some racist county sheriff's deputy that was tryin to arrest me for no good reason. And just before that, I was skippin town down Florida, runnin from some goddamn wanderin amusement carnival, cause some white cracka prosecutor was pissed off that his little girl's thighs needed seventeen stitches, and she would have a lifetime of scars from gettin her thighs opened up by a shiftless nigger — and I don't mean in the bad way — while riding Marblee Amusement's Rumbly Wumbly Ride for Toddlers that I was operatin. So that's why you can't charge me with snatchin no white lady's bracelet. No, suh. Cause I was too goddamn busy doing all that other shit._

One day soon, Da'Ndre knew he'd appear before some old whitey cracka redneck judge or even worse, some house nigger judge, and just like all the other black American men in this lineup would do if they had to, he'd snivel and beg the judge like a baby for a second chance, and the judge would say _fuck no, I'm tough on crime, you don't get no goddamn second chance, nobody gets no second chance in my courtroom._ But in actuality, they should all be asking for a first chance, because not a goddamn one of them had ever got one. Da'Ndre knew. Not in school, not in jobs, not in life, not in racist fucking America where an average black man didn't stand a chance in hell, not from his naked birth til white society tortured his shiny black ass to death, dying behind bars, whether he was in prison, or livin in the hood.

And then Da'Ndre could hear the judge sayin, _you had your first chance young man, you had your chance when that wealthy white guilt-ridden Jewish couple adopted your sorry black ass, you had your chance when they rescued you from the clutches of that abusive foster-whore witch, Mrs Kingery, where they could have left you forever, but they took you into their house and gave you every opportunity to start a new successful life, and you blew it. You were holding a jackpot ticket from the Michigan fucking Lottery and you flat out refused to collect and that ain't nobody's fault but your own._

And Da'Ndre knew that judge would be right. Because Da'Ndre knew he actually did once have a first chance, if only for a short time. And he should have taken that opportunity when he had the chance. But his head was so far up his own ignorant, rebellious, angry black teenage ass, he didn't. And now look where he was. It wasn't destiny like some goddamn travel bingo card. It was his own fucking choices. And he hoped the judge who preached that speech in his face would be the white one and not the house nigger, cause if it was the house nigger, that would just be too much for him to bear.

Da'Ndre wished he'd have stood up for himself when them white girls, fifteen years old and drunk on the Jack Black they stole from Daddy's liquor cabinet, giggled and belly-laughed all over each other. They were falling down drunk and getting on a kiddie ride that was inappropriate for their ages, but there was no real written rule against it, and they shouted that fact in his face with their underage liquor breath, and threatened to get their powerful white lawyer daddy to sue Mr Marblee if Da'Ndre wouldn't let them on the ride. And then when he started the ride moving, those girls unhooked the safety bar that Da'Ndre knew he'd properly locked in place, and then they stood up in the middle of the ride, hollering and guffawing with their sneaked-in whiskey and their oily Cokes held high and splashing all over the innocent children who were riding near them. And then they got their stupid thighs sliced open because they were too fucking entitled for their own goddamn good. Not because of anything Da'Ndre did or neglected to do, but because of their own goddamn arrogance.

But it was no use to fight nothing like that. He knew they'd pin everything on him, pin everything on the nigger with the nappy head, gold tooth, pierced ear and history, they'd figure out how to bring that into the mix, his juvenile history, even though those records were supposed to be locked up forever with the key thrown away. Just like _he_ was gonna be, locked up forever with the key thrown away, starting right at that very moment.

They never checked those drunk girls for alcohol and sure as shit they'd ramrod Da'Ndre through the wringer and all the way into prison if they could, even though the assistant district attorney oughta have seen plain as day in his own goddamn liquor cabinet that his own lovely daughter stole half a fifth of his own bourbon. Hell, she probably stole a whole fifth the way those girls were acting. But no doubt that rich white motherfucker had more liquor than he even knew. He didn't have one bottle at a time like regular folks. That fancy lawyer didn't have any idea how much alcohol he owned, because he had so much money, it didn't matter to him. All he knew was that his innocent daughter got her legs sliced up by a stupid shiftless nigger, and he was gonna get his revenge with the full force of Georgia state law.

No justice, no fucking justice.

And while he was thinking about it, how Da'Ndre wished he'd told his black-ass daddy to go fuck himself! What a difference that would have made in his life!

Everything had turned out just like the guard back in juvie predicted. Malone was his name, Guard Malone, telling him he was gonna be in the big house, and sure enough, Da'Ndre was on his way _fo sho_ this time.

Standing in the lineup with four other negro men like they were all slaves at an auction, to be sold to the highest bidder, sold to the white men who own Wall Street's for-profit corporate prisons, contractually guaranteed by the state to have full occupancy at all times, even if not a single one of these negroes put a bruise on any old mink-coated white woman where her bracelet used to be. That didn't matter.

What mattered was, the beast was hungry, and one of them was gonna be a snack.

# # #

Who the hell knows how the legal system works, but when Da'Ndre finally saw a lawyer, he naturally figured the guy was court appointed, since Da'Ndre was financially limp-dicked. The dude had a prominent eyeball; his other was a sleeper. Because of this, the man appeared to casually daydream out the barred windows, at least on one side of his face. He was around sixty-something, a real nice honky for a change.

"Remember me?" the old white attorney said. His armpits perspired like they were having a real heavy sweat period.

Da'Ndre looked at the man. He examined the droopy, off-kilter eyeball, and noticed how the man's other eye was obviously fake. His beard was grizzled, his hair gray, his buttons were bursting, his shirt was drenched.

"Earl Finkter," the lawyer said, extending his paw for a regulation white man's handshake, which he then awkwardly levered across Da'Ndre's thumb in a failed attempt to flow into an old-school soul shake. "Your momma and daddy used to work for me."

"Oh yeah," Da'Ndre said, trying to run the clock backwards on Finkter's image, like a reverse milk carton. "I think I remember you. That was a long time ago. I was just a kid."

A police investigator approached, ignored Finkter, leaned close to Da'Ndre, and addressed him eyeball to eyeball. "Mr Goldstein, we can get you processed and out of here quick if you could just answer a few questions for us."

Before Da'Ndre could agree, Finkter jumped up and forced his sweat-soaked arm between the cop and Da'Ndre. "No, he will not," the learned attorney said. Da'Ndre thought the lawyer cop-blocked with impressive authority. "My client demands to be released immediately."

A new guy, a white man wearing a starched white shirt and fresh TJ Maxx necktie, walked up close. "Sir, your client got picked up in a Shannon County Georgia jail uniform." This dude looked like a prosecutor or something. "Jailbreaking, grand larceny, murder, whatever he did, we don't know yet, but we got a call in to Georgia right now."

"What crime is it to dress in an orange jump suit?" Finkter had a slight southern twang hiding just underneath his adopted yankee accent.

"We caught him running from the scene of an assault."

"Is it illegal to go out for a jog now?"

The two white guys exchanged a hollow glance. "Maybe not," white shirt said, "but he was in a jail uniform, so he's our primary person of interest."

"In a jail uniform?" Finkter said. "Well trick or fucking treat."

"We have the right to hold him in custody for twelve hours."

"He's walking out of here with me right now."

# # #

Finkter opened his BMW's passenger door and tossed the retail shopping bag onto Da'Ndre's lap.

Da'Ndre looked inside it. He found plaid Ralph Lauren walking shorts, an AEROSMITH t-shirt, and brown leather flip-flops.

"See if they fit," the friendly, lazy-eyed lawyer said, closing the door and turning his back.

Da'Ndre wiggled out of his orange jumpsuit and jammed himself into the street clothes. He emerged from the Beemer to model for the nice attorney. "Thanks for all of this," he said, even though he hadn't felt so white since he'd had his penis downsized.

"Yeah, looks great," the lawyer said, scanning with one of his eyes, maybe the broken one.

"I didn't know public defenders was so nice to people." Da'Ndre thought the dude wasn't anything like his parents had said, but then everybody complains about their employer.

"Let's go get you something to eat," Finkter said. "Then we'll go back to my office and straighten all these legal matters out, so you can walk as a free man with a clear conscience."

Earl Finkter pulled out his expense account charge card and bought Da'Ndre two Triple Whoppers, two jumbo french fries, a medium CoCola which got filled thrice, two apple pies and a large chocolate shake. He appeared to be genuinely interested in helping Da'Ndre sort out any and all legal problems he might have, and also inquired about his daddy's problems — completely free of charge.

Over the course of the next three minutes, Da'Ndre stuffed the first Whopper into his mouth, and told Finkter everything while he was chewing it. He told him all about running away from Marblee Amusements to keep from going to jail. He told him all about whipping Nimrod's ass, hijacking JC's Warriors, and picking Andre up at prison. He told him all about getting captured and being taken back to jail in Shannon County, about the surprise arrival of the butch dyke FBI Agent with arrest warrants, about the explosion that killed Dingledine, about his escape from FBI custody, about the car chase and gunfight that killed the FBI Agent, about the explosion of the FBI car, about the ride to Detroit on the freight train, about the fight with his father in the railway yard, about the discovery of his baby momma's unconscious body at his mother's apartment, about his brief meeting with his daughter in her pajamas with feet in them, about his performance with JC's Warriors at Evangelipalooza, about how Jesus took control, about how he was arrested on stage, and about how he was made to stand in a police lineup just before Finkter showed up and got him sprung.

Then he started into the second Whopper, and went back through the entire story, filling his lawyer in on all the details, knowing that he was one hundred percent protected by attorney-client privilege.

"Wow, that's really quite a story," Finkter said when the Whoppers were finished. "You know, Da'Ndre, I'd really like to help your daddy get out of any trouble he might be in. Do you by chance know where he could be hiding out right now?"

"I don't have any fucking clue," Da'Ndre said, ejecting a masticated spittle of french fry onto the back of Finkter's hairy forearm.

"Where would you guess, if you had to guess?"

Andre kissed the rim of his second red cardboard french fry cup, tossed his head backward and spanked the last crunchy stub into his mouth. "I don't have any fucking idea." Then he belched so loud he had to swallow something squishy that unexpectedly chased the gas up his throat.

Stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, Da'Ndre rode with Finkter to a sketchy part of town, to a nice but aging red brick office that reeked of dog shit, since it was immediately downwind and across the street from a dusty, fenced-in hovel called Emily Rutkowski's K-9 Training Academy.

When they entered the office, Da'Ndre heard muffled cries, piercing curses, hellish howls from a subterranean room below the floorboards.

"You like horror movies?" Earl Finkter asked him.

"Yeah, I like em alright I guess."

"We got a full surround sound home theater downstairs. There's some kids down there watching right now." Finkter grabbed the door handle. "C'mere."

Da'Ndre walked to the basement door as Finkter opened it up. He looked down a set of raw wooden stairs into a dark, unfinished concrete dungeon. He cocked his ear.

"Mister Fiiiiiiinkterrrrrrrr...." came a suffering man's howl from below.

"That is a fantastic sound system," Da'Ndre said. "It sounds so realistic."

"Hellllllp meeeeee, Mister Finkter," the feeble voice cried, "she done broke my back...I can't get up..."

"Hey...ain't your name Finkter, too?" Da'Ndre asked. "What movie are they watchin?"

Da'Ndre did not expect the snapping, bare-knuckled blow that the nice white lawyer executed to his vertebrae. He didn't expect to be shoved down the curious stairwell. The boot in the ass and the uncontrolled tumble were complete surprises. On the way down, he saw his flip-flops fly, and then he felt the slap of his own bone on concrete: the crack of elbow, ankle and cheekbone, the konk of skull on cement, and the rapid fade into darkness. It was all completely unexpected.

When he regained consciousness, the door was closed and the cellar was dark. Da'Ndre sat up and looked around, or tried to in the darkness. His head screamed pain, his eyes refused to adjust to the low light as a near-dead man moaned on the floor beside him.

A sliver of street light sneaked through a blackened but cracked pane, touring over a pile of writhing meat heaped on top of a pissed-on mattress. Fleshy pink mounds rolled and twisted like a man-eating snake. The animal was scantily clad, bursting from a red, white and blue string bikini with stars-n-bars crisscrossing massive breasts and highlighting overinflated androgynous genitalia. Thirteen stars triangulated nipples, gut and hot spot. It was a rebel-flagged fat-ass with a dying dude at its swollen feet.

It was his mother.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

### THE LINEUP

Launjeray sported a chic Platinum Obamacare antibiotic collar. It was unsuccessfully attempting to smother the wildfire of a rope burn the gimp had applied to her throat.

She watched as three black inmates entered in single file. They were good looking men who probably sold weed to undercover cops, men she would be proud to call her husband, decent men locked up by the white man's shitstem and then paraded in front of her like they were ordinary criminals.

"I told you he was white, with a fucked-up leg," Launjeray said, her voice raspy from the near-fatal strangling.

The inspector, a chubby white porno-daddy type, pointed his unlit cigar at the fourth man now entering on the other side of the one-way mirrors. "Just look at them," he said. "We caught one of these fellas running from the scene. Tell me if you recognize him."

The brothas all looked like they'd done this dance a million times, staring up at Launjeray with dull, jail-jaded eyes. They knew where she was at, even though they couldn't see her through the one-way glass.

"This right here," Launjeray said to the investigator, pointing to the purple bruise adorning her own left eye, "T-Bone did that. Tommy Lynn Weiner, they call him T-Bone, and he's a white muthafuckin asshole. This other shit, all this action on my back, my neck, upside my head, some white gimp muthafucka with a club foot sucka-punched me from behind and wrapped a rope round my neck like he was the KKK, tryin to lynch me with his bare fucking hands."

"We have other information."

"Was you there? Cause I was," Launjeray said. "What kind of fuckin other information can you possibly have when I tell you both these muthafuckas is white?" She angrily motioned around her head and torso to indicate her collection of bruises and abrasions. "Why you parading these nice lookin brothas in front of me like this?"

"Why don't you just look and see if you recognize any of them?"

Launjeray heaved a sigh and turned back around just as the fifth man was shoved inside by the jailer. The man reluctantly took his place in the lineup. He had a spiky dread doo. She thought she saw the glint of gold gilt on his dental work. He had an empty hole in his left earlobe in lieu of a conflict diamond.

Launjeray stared at him. She was completely flummoxed. How did the father of her child show up _here_? After so many years? Why was he in such a state of emotional suffering? And how did he shrink? She had remembered him as much more taller. And who the fuck _was_ he? Her thoughts inadvertently escaped through her lips. "How'd _he_ get here?" she asked.

"How did _who_ get here?" the cop said. "Which one?"

Launjeray swiveled her unbruised eye toward the cop and held his gaze for three beats. "I didn't say nothin," she said, breaking her eye contact with him to allow her gaze to migrate back toward the dude looked like her baby daddy.

"I heard you. You recognize one of them. Which one is it?" the cop said.

"I..." Launjeray tore her eyes from her baby daddy's tortured visage to lock wits with the honky cop, but she couldn't speak, she didn't know what the fuck to say.

"I can tell you recognize him," the investigator said. "Just point your finger."

Launjeray's eyes involuntarily answered. She spun back around to the lineup, locked eyes with her baby daddy even though she knew he couldn't see her. She got up from her chair and padded close enough to feel an intimacy with the one-way mirror. She traced her forefinger along the inside of the glass, right alongside the tear rolling down the tortured man's cheeks as he peered up at the ceiling, whispering something like he was hoping for help from above.

The cop sucked on his naked brown unlit cigar. "If we link you to any one of these characters, and you haven't told us everything you know, I'm gonna be frank with you, your ass is gonna be sold down the river, young lady. For a long, long time. You understand?"

Launjeray gazed at her baby daddy with faraway eyes, not hearing a word the cop was saying.

"Escape from federal custody, drugs, grand larceny." He paused to let that sink in. "Accessory to murder of a Federal Agent," he said. "If he's getting the death penalty, you can bet your sweet ass you're getting at least half that. Unless you tell us right now. This is your chance, sweetheart."

Launjeray turned around to face the investigator. "I told you it was a white gimp mothafucka that strangled me, and T-Bone Weiner that punched my eye."

"You know which one I'm talking about," he said. "The crybaby, right there where I'm pointing, right in front of you. The wimp. The pussy. The faggot. Look at him cry. Boo-hoo-hoo."

Launjeray raised her hand as if she were preparing to slap the cop. "You shut the fuck up," she said.

"Talk." The cop didn't flinch, like he knew she wasn't gonna hit him.

Launjeray dropped her hand to her side. She gulped, swung her eyes back toward her man, saw his eyes reveal a feminine side to his personality that she never suspected he had. "I done told you. I ain't never seen none of these niggas before in my life."

The theme from Jaws started playing from somewhere. It was muffled.

"Gimme my phone back," Launjeray said.

The cop opened a drawer and laid an evidence baggie on the desktop. It contained a live droid with a cracked screen that displayed the caller's name. _T-Bone_ , it said.

"Go ahead and answer it," the cop said. "We'll go pick him up and he won't bother you any more."

"I ain't unlockin this phone for your honky ass," Launjeray said, scooping up the evidence baggie as the Jaws music died. "I want my gun back, too."

She flipped out her worthless piece of shit Wanker Investigations Private Detective badge like it was a Hustler centerfold, and held it in front of the cop's face.

Just so she could find out what would happen.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

### BACK IN COURT

For the previous two years, Dixie Clippens had been playing the role of Mrs Mabel Carpenter, a drop-dead stupid widow sentenced to life in the wheelchair by a negligent semi driver who rear-ended her while she was en route to the city refuse transfer station to unload her carload of worn-out tires. As the official story went, Mrs Carpenter had innocently accumulated seventeen dead tires in her apartment like a cat lady with an unusual used auto part fetish. She had never figured out how to answer a tire hoarding question, should it ever arise, but this was the seventeenth trial she had performed with Earl Finkter, ersatz Esquire, and in all those times, she had never been asked how she had come to collect so many goddamn _tires._ It was a huge hole in her back story, a story that was told as if every law-abiding American had seventeen or so dead radials laying around their living rooms, and then one day, out of the blue, they just decide to load them up in the family vehicle and take them all to the dump, and get run over by a semi before they get there, and _thank the Lord_ they had them tires in the car to absorb the blow, or else they'd be dead as doorknobs. Just a typical random Tuesday in middle America.

Earl Finkter pushed Dixie's wheelchair up the courthouse ADA ramp, a task which Dixie was happy she didn't have to do with her own flabby arms. Her leg was still swollen and blue from her captivity. Her wrists were raw and burning from the duct tape.

Sol shined so bright on this particular day; the world was high contrast inside Dixie's pounding migraine. Everything was brilliantly illuminated like those drops from the eye doctor, with deep black shadows crowding out the mid-range details. Every bush, every tree, every car and column cast a shadow, and every shadow was as black as Andre Turnipseed, black enough to hide revenge until it was too fucking late.

They entered the somber courthouse, an impressive, regal building peopled with sorry looking perverts and thieves, each carrying a briefcase to demonstrate their membership in the state bar. Finkter walked around the metal detector, avoiding harassment by flashing his counterfeit lawyer ID badge. Dixie got cleared after her wheelchair was inspected for explosives by a couple of half-assed dimwits who wiped it with wet napkins and then examined the results under an ultraviolet light.

Finkter showed a remarkable recovery from paranoia after crossing into the safe side of the metal detectors. He wheeled Dixie through the hallways, past the speeders – the most shamed and penitent of the entire bunch of accused. They were such pussies, such sheep, so awestruck by the chatter of Latin and theatre of justice that, should they be sentenced to twenty years in solitary for driving five over without a seat belt, they would just whimper like puppy dogs and allow themselves to be led off into whatever cell, gallows, electric chair or firing squad their noses were pointed to.

Dixie knew the law didn't work worth a shit. After seventeen cases, six of which could be called decent winners, she knew how to nap through the bailiff's authoritarian bullshit, lightly snore through a briefing given by some airheaded airline stewardess who got grounded into being the court clerk, and flip her hand dismissively at the bellowed command to _all rise_ just before the judge made his grand, black-robed, old white man entrance.

"Please seat the jury," the judge said.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

### USPS

Andre knew the homie was batshit cray-cray as soon as the dude opened the door. "FBI," Andre said, flashing a large silver badge in an ID wallet. "I need to come in and talk to you for a minute, sir."

The chubby old blue collar negro stood there scratching his ass. He was wearing ragged paisley boxers and a mustard-stained wifebeater with a bouquet of gray hair protruding out the top of it. He took a couple seconds to evaluate the honesty of the unannounced visitor in the shit-filthy suit. "Lemme see that badge," he said. He angled a single-templed set of cat-eye reading glasses across the bridge of his nose. "Hold it still so I can read it." The mustard-stained dude squinted through his magnifying lenses. "Officer...Gaylord Wright?" He shoved his one-legged glasses to the north pole of his shiny brown dome. " _Gaylord?_ What the fuck kinda name is _Gaylord?_ "

"Gaylord, that's my name."

"No sista is gonna name no kid of hers _Gaylord_ ," said the old homie with the yellow stain and pregnant gut. "I been carryin letters now for thirty-seven years and I seen every goddamn name in the book. You can be a Antwon or a Bif or a Bjorg and that's alright, but ain't no nigga inna world gonna have no name _Gaylord._ " He pulled the glasses back down in front of his eyes. "Besides," he said, looking from the badge up to Andre, "you whited that shit out and changed it and cut your own picture in there."

"Sir, this is official business."

"Official business my black ass," said the condiment dripper, flashing a blue steel Saturday Night Special he extracted from the rear elastic of his boxers. "How bout you get the fuck outa here before I call the cops?"

And at that point, when Theophonopoulous H Livingstone attempted to push his apartment's front door into its jamb, Andre Turnipseed was left with absolutely no choice except to throttle the senior negro's trachea between his thumb and forefinger, and disarm the opinionated postal worker with his free hand, before the dude could muster enough courage to pull the trigger.

# # #

In the evening of Day Two of the trial, the mustard-stained homie ate seventeen consecutive single-serving packs of Quaker Peaches & Creme Instant Oatmeal, each one personally prepared and spoon-fed by Andre, who exhibited extreme patience with his duct-taped hostage. And then on the morning of Day Three, when Andre was already running late, the old man had the audacity to claim he had to take a shit but couldn't do it with a pistol pointed at him – on account of a shy colon he had inherited from his grandmother – even though his pistol was in Andre's hands on the other side of the bathroom door where he couldn't even see it. He said he didn't want no pictures on the internets of him shot to death on the shitter, because it would be embarrassing to be pussy-shamed like that after he was gone.

Andre was doing his best. He felt sorry for the poor nigga, held captive by his own gun and his own stupidity. But it wasn't Andre's fault the fuckwit didn't have nothing else to eat in his entire cupboard except Quaker Instant Peaches & Creme. That was why the old man couldn't take a shit. Quaker Instant Oatmeal set up like Elmer's Glue-All in your gut. Everybody knew that.

"I can take some of your money down to the Blimpie, get you something decent to eat," Andre had offered. "You want a sub?"

"You gonna rob me now? Is that what you gonna do? Rob a hard workin nigga?"

"Naw," Andre had said, "I was gonna buy you a sandwich with your own money. That ain't stealin."

So after waiting far too long, Andre finally rapped his knuckles on the bathroom door. "You either shit or get the fuck off the goddamn pot, cause I gotta get to court." Receiving no answer, Andre pushed the bathroom door open. The chubby career mail carrier was still sitting on the toilet, still in his French's wifebeater, his drawers down around his ankles, wrists duct-taped behind his back, sweating like he'd just delivered two tons of junk mail by hand.

"I can't take no shit with no gun pointed at me," the USPS worker said, shoving the bathroom door closed with one foot.

Andre let the man shut the door. Then he spoke in an even tone through it. "Bro, I promise you, when this is all over, I'm gonna be sendin you one hundred thousand dollars cash money, aight?"

"Man, we both know you ain't sendin me shit."

Andre kicked the bathroom door open, pushed the gun barrel against mustard stain's cranium and cocked the hammer. "If you don't shit in half a second, I'm gonna send a hollow point right straight through your head and out the other side, _mothafucka."_

The postman's terrified bowels released an erratic stream of semi-digested Quaker Oats, filling the small bathroom with a stench that drastically reduced the tension between the two men.

# # #

The jury consisted of eight white women, one white man, two black women and Theophonopoulous H Livingstone, who resembled Andre Turnipseed in virtually no way whatsoever, except for their shared generic race. Livingstone was a solid ten years Andre's senior. He was forty pounds heavier and had enough cream in the coffee that even if Andre nailed an albino chick, their love child wouldn't be anywhere near as light skinned as Theo.

Andre cinched Livingstone's Sunday-go-to-meetin wardrobe around his waist. It was a fit even looser than the oversized FBI clothes he had thrown in the dumpster at Livingstone's apartment.

At the courthouse, Andre proffered Livingstone's Michigan Driver's License to a jaded old white bailiff — a career courthouse cop that Andre hoped would be a racist.

The bailiff held Livingstone's license up beside Andre's face and compared the fat, bald, elderly light brown image on the license photo against the lean, younger, blackest man on earth standing before him, a man with prison tattoos and a fro long enough to hold a pick. Then the cracka bailiff handed Theo's license back to Andre and motioned him inside.

# # #

Finkter's elbow ached so much he couldn't bring himself to touch his junk, even though he had laid awake for hours. Four nights of keeping his right hand on his derringer's butt under his pillow like he was a woman, and four days of keeping his right hand on his derringer's butt under his coat like he was Napoleon. All that had cost him flexibility. His elbow joint was welded into an acute angle by what might as well have been rigor mortis.

He just wanted to get this shit over with. He only wanted to get this last fucking job done, this final settlement, this ticket to his Haitian paradise with the house and pool and boys. Lots and lots of affordable boys.

He knew which demographics lowered his chances for success with a jury. Young people, middle aged men, and blacks, all blacks — none of them had empathy for an injured white woman, especially if they caught sight of her rebel flag tattoos. Young people thought injured old people were whiners and complainers. Men had less sympathy for a woman. And blacks never wanted to give white folks a dime in a settlement, because the insurance company would send a black attorney who all the black jurors would fall in love with like they were watching a Denzel Washington movie. And of course, old black men were the worst demographic of all for a white female plaintiff, because they had the worst racist, misogynist opinions and preconceptions of anyone. That's what Finkter knew.

He got the jury stacked as best he could. It turned out to be a group he thought he could persuade with his illustrious perjury, but the insurance company sent their Denzel, the spoiler, the fucking spoiler. It wasn't looking as good as he'd hoped. He might only end up with a meager settlement despite his best efforts.

Finkter wished he'd have been put on earth as a hot young lawyer babe, a sexy blonde with tits and ass that all the powerful men would drool over. If he'd have been blessed with that kind of talent, he would have stripped and teased the old white judges into favorable decisions. He would have fucked the prosecutors and defense teams, and he would have sucked cocks all the way to the top of his profession. By this point in his career, he would have been filthy rich.

But Earl Finkter had to make do with what he had. A sad sack of a disillusioned penis, aroused more by the male form than in the example set by Jesus.

It was a miracle that Finkter got a jury with any potential at all, because he was constantly looking over his shoulder, concerned about his safety, knowing Andre Turnipseed could show up at any moment to get even. He kept his hand inside his jacket pocket like a leper hiding rotten flesh. His fingers were always wrapped around the derringer he illegally smuggled into the courthouse under cover of his fake attorney's ID card. He knew it looked suspicious to keep his hand in his pocket all day long, but what choice did he have? He was going to be jumped at any second by a hardened convict out for revenge, a revenge that was well deserved.

Two afternoons on jury selection and then the trial started. The judge, an old white man as fate would have it, banged his gavel and the jury was led into their box.

Finkter watched as eleven of them were seated. The twelfth juror was missing. Finkter looked at his notes. It was the old black dude with the long, unpronounceable name the insurance company's Denzel had hand-picked and managed to keep. Beautiful. Maybe they'd get an alternate juror, the white senior housewife. She'd be perfect.

"Sir!" the bailiff shouted. "This way."

And Finkter was surprised when he saw the man who entered, Juror Number Twelve, allegedly one Theophonopoulous H Livingstone. It was the blackest man on earth. It was Andre Turnipseed.

Finkter looked over at Denzel. The handsome black attorney finished organizing his papers in front of him, and then eyeballed the jury. He failed to display even a flicker of recognition that something was amiss. "Ready, your honor," Denzel said, clacking a stack of papers on his tabletop.

# # #

One by one, Andre made eye contact with all eleven of his peers around the table. "Five mil," he said, serious as dick cancer. "Not one fuckin dime bag less."

"Sir, do you have to curse?"

"Not one dime bag less."

"You gotta be kidding me," said the fuckwit who'd been elected jury foreman because of his extraordinary height, European ancestry, and penis. "We've voted seventeen times already, you're the only one doing this. The rest of us want to dismiss the case."

"Did you see the lady's leg?" Andre said. "It's purple. She's hurt bad."

"She's faking it."

"This whole thing is fishy."

"She's a racist. Did you see her tattoos?"

"I wanna go home, can we just go home?"

"Have you ever been in a goddamn wheelchair?" Andre stared the other eleven down. They exchanged glances.

"My sister has OCD," said some white trash bitch who was too ignorant to get out of jury duty. "She's been in a wheelchair for two weeks."

"Come on," another white woman said, an impatient twit with a character flaw playing into Andre's plan. "Why should we care? We been in this room for seventeen bleepin hours, let's get this over with."

"I'll go along with the rest of you, but five million dollars is way too much," said another white woman.

"I'm hot."

"Can't you just vote to throw the case out like the rest of us?"

"I'm getting claustrophobic."

"How about splitting the difference?"

"I think I'm hyperventilating."

"This little room sucks, it's like being in jail."

"If we are back here tomorrow, they're gonna give us another forty dollars and I might lose my food stamps."

"I think I'm going to throw up."

"Let's declare a mistrial."

"We can't, the judge says we have to arrive at a verdict."

"We don't have to arrive at a verdict."

" _We can get out of here faster if we do!"_

" _SIR, CAN YOU PLEASE HELP US GET THIS OVER WITH?"_

Andre leaned back in the hard wooden courthouse chair. It was a chair as basic against the tail and backbone as one would expect to find in an austere monastery. He wove his fingers together behind his head, plopped Theo Livingstone's oversize oxfords on the deliberation table and crossed his ankles. "I been in worse rooms than this," he said. "I can wait."

# # #

"Has the jury reached a verdict?"

"Yes, your honor," said the tall, stupid white man.

"Please read your verdict."

The foreman read off an index card. "The jury finds the defendant negligent and awards the sum of three million dollars," he said. Then he dropped his arms to his side in defeated exhaustion.

The insurance company's handsome black Denzel stood and threw his paperwork into his soft leather briefcase. "Appeal, your honor," he said, and jetted with his posse.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

### THE SETTLEMENT

Dixie NASCARed her chair through the crowded courthouse as Finkter tailed behind her, his briefcase and legal papers hastily stuffed under his sweat-soaked arm. He broke his formal stride every three steps with a quick skip ahead in an attempt to keep up with her wheelchair while trying to pretend he wasn't really in a hurry. Dixie slapped the big blue handicap button on the wall to open the courthouse's giant glass front doors. She rolled out onto the courthouse porch as the insurance company's handsome black attorney was just taking his first three steps down the mountainous marble pyramid. "I'M READY TO SETTLE!" she shouted.

The handsome black attorney stopped and turned with presidential style.

"I DONE FIRED MY LAWYER! I'LL TAKE A MILLION RIGHT NOW!"

Finkter arrived out of breath. "My client is a bit upset," he said, attempting to turn Dixie's wheelchair around to leave. "We'll be in touch."

"YOU'RE FIRED MOTHERFUCKER!" Dixie grabbed the wheels of her chair and wrenched herself away from Finkter. She held a scrap of paper out toward the handsome black attorney. "You can put the money in this account," Dixie said.

"You _can't_ fire me," Finkter said to Dixie. He latched onto the faded plastic handles of Dixie's wheelchair, and engaged his solid eyeball with the opposing attorneys. "She _can't_ fire me."

"Ma'am," the handsome black attorney stepped toward Dixie, knelt down and put his chiseled African witch doctor's mask up to her face. "You do understand you could be contractually obligated to your attorney for some amount of compensation for his work."

"Look him up at the state bar!" Dixie said. "He's a fake! He ain't no real lawyer!"

The handsome black attorney's eyes shifted up toward Finkter.

"The accident, she hit her head in the accident, it made her go crazy," Finkter said, swirling his finger around his temple.

"I ain't crazy! I wanna settle! And he is a fake! Look it up on your smart phones right now!"

All three of Denzel's white lackeys exchanged puzzled glances. Then they pulled out their smart phones and started tapping on them.

"Alright, y'all go ahead and settle up between yourselves then," Finkter said, squinting with one eye. "I don't care. I got collateral." He theatrically released his grip from the handles of Dixie's wheelchair and promptly trotted down the stairs toward the street.

Dixie rolled toward Denzel. "What you got for me to sign?"

"Well...a million dollars, Mrs Carpenter...we don't have that kind of authority."

"How much can you give me now? Right now?"

The black lawyer exchanged glances with his posse.

"I'll take it, whatever you got! Gimme the paperwork! Gimme a ink pen!"

Denzel kept his gaze focused on Dixie's eyes. He snapped his fingers over his shoulder without looking around. His trio of white Harvard lackeys fumbled through an accordion file folder. With a flourish, they produced a pre-prepared legal settlement document and a ninety-nine dollar pen. Dixie scribbled where the youngest white lawyer pointed, right beside where it said something about "$15,000.00 (Fifteen Thousand Dollars)."

A high-pitched car horn blared from the street below. Denzel and his white boys appeared surprised to see Juror Twelve tooting the horn of a cherry red Miata at the bottom of the stairs, license plate THEO. "Let's go baby!" Juror Twelve shouted.

"I'm free motherfuckers!" Dixie yelled, jumping out of her wheelchair and racing down the courthouse stairs, one leg pasty white, the other dead blue. She dove through the Miata's open passenger window. Her exposed underpanties, her legs and her fluffy slippers disappeared through the side window of the car like a time lapse video of a blossoming flower played backwards, as tires squealed and the car sped away.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

### MEANWHILE

Da'Ndre slowly became aware of his consciousness at some unknown hour of the day or night. He was laying on his side on the floor of a dark concrete dungeon, hog-tied with duct tape, shivering from the cold, and hurting all over. His head was banging from the inside out.

He struggled against the duct tape but it was stuck tight. His arms were behind his back. The duct tape had been looped a dozen times around his wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. Another loop held his neck down to his knees. He was wrapped up as tight as a gestating fetus.

Da'Ndre rocked from side to side, the only motion he could muster. He gained momentum until he was able to roll through an apogee and flip onto his other side. But instead of flopping all the way down onto the floor as he expected, he rolled onto something else in the dark cellar. It was something cold, clammy, spongy. Da'Ndre was barely able to wiggle his head. He felt the obstruction with his cheek, and then realized it had the stench of Old Spice mixed with rotting meat.

It was the man who had been moaning, now dead.

Da'Ndre tried to scream but someone had wrapped a strip of duct tape over his mouth like a sticky silver smile from ear to ear.

He rocked, trying to flop back onto the cold floor the way he had been when he woke up. That was better than using a dead dude as a pillow.

He flipped himself back onto the cement floor. He could fight the duct tape, maybe wiggle out of it altogether if he survived long enough. Or he could just give up and die.

And then he remembered: _Jesus._ He could _pray._ Not out loud, because of the tape, but he could _think a prayer_ real hard. _"Dear Jesus,"_ Da'Ndre concentrated, focusing his mental energies on sending his message directly to God Almighty up in heaven. _"I ain't never asked you for nothin at all. But just this once, can you please help a po nigga out?"_

His prayer was immediately answered by two gunshots from above.

# # #

Launjeray was getting good at blasting doors open with T-Bone's pistol. This was two in one day. The first door took three shots. The second one only took two. Subtract those five from the seven she started with, and that meant she had two rounds left in the magazine. She completely forgot to subtract the one she had shot through T-Bone's back.

Her army boots swished across the Persian carpet. She walked through Earl Finkter's office like she owned the place, except she swept her pistol in front of her as if she expected to encounter resistance.

She checked behind every door, peeked in every closet, punched at every drape. The basement door was locked with a sliding bolt. If anyone was down there, they couldn't bother her upstairs. When she was satisfied she was safe, she closed the rear door and staged the broken pieces like it had never been shot open. Then she sat on the lawyer's pot to piss.

While rifling through the cabinet under the vanity for toilet paper, she thought she heard something from below the floorboards. It sounded like a groan, a burst of lung, a stifled plea for help.

She put her cleanup on time delay, pulled her pants up and snuck to the basement door. She readied her pistol, slid the lock open, twisted the door handle, and pulled the door open. She shined her cell phone flashlight down the stairs.

She could see some dude lying on the floor. It was the white gimp muthafucka that garroted her, she was sure, even though his face was now purple.

Beside him was a brotha, struggling to get out of a spider web of duct tape. His back was toward her so she couldn't see his face. He had been pretzeled into a fetal position, wrapped up in a mile of silver-gray. He was wearing ugly white man's shorts and a dirty t-shirt. He was barefoot, but a pair of flip-flops were lying dead on the floor nearby.

"Whozzat?" Launjeray said.

The brotha struggled, tried to look around and scream for help, but he couldn't bend his neck, and his mouth was taped shut.

Launjeray stepped down, one step at a time, searching the remote corners of the cellar dungeon with her cell phone flashlight for signs of danger. When she got to the brotha, she flipped him over and looked in his eyes.

"Omigod," she said, "are you who I think you is?"

"Um-hum!" the man hummed through the duct tape.

Launjeray clicked her switchblade open.

The man's eyes grew large. His head shook and his vocalization succeeded in conveying the message that he didn't want to be stabbed to death while duct-taped in a homemade dungeon.

Launjeray selected a handful of the crisscrossing duct tape and sliced through it.

The brotha was released from his fetal position, but his ankles, arms and wrists were still bound. He stretched out straight and flat on the floor, revealing an AEROSMITH logo on his t-shirt. He sighed with relief through his nostrils. Then he rolled onto his belly and held his wrists up behind his back, a pantomime to request that she cut his arms loose.

But instead of obliging his request, Launjeray rolled him over onto his back, planted her knee on his ribcage, reached down toward his crotch with her switchblade, and sliced through the clasp on his shorts.

The man's eyes grew wide with fear again. "Um-um! Um-um!" he hummed through the tape while shaking his head no.

Launjeray stood over him and grabbed the belt loops on each side of his Ralph Laurens. She put her thumbs under his tighty whities and pulled everything down around his knees in one swift motion. Then she grabbed his dick and shined her cell phone flashlight on it.

It was circumcised.

"It _is_ you! What the fuck are _you_ doin here?" she asked. She dug her fingers underneath one side of the duct tape that covered the man's mouth, and then ripped it off his beard like it was a brazilian wax job.

"Aaaaaaugh! Shit!" The man screamed in pain as his facial hair was extracted by the roots.

"You remember me?" Launjeray said, shining her cell phone's flashlight up at her face like a Halloween ghoul.

"Yeah. I remember you."

"Who am I then?" She shone the flashlight back in the taped-up black man's face.

"I don't know your name," the man said. "But you my baby momma."

"How you know that?"

"I remember you. And I seen _her_ earlier today, or yesterday. What day is it?"

"You seen _who?_ "

"I seen our daughter."

"You seen my _daughter?_ When did you see her?"

"When I thought you was dead in my momma's apartment," the hogtied brown man said. "She showed up at the door in her pajamas with the feet in em. Can you please cut me out of this duct tape?"

"Your _momma's_ apartment?" Launjeray's flashlight stared into the man's eyes. "What's your name?"

"Da'Ndre. What's yours?"

" _Dondray?_ " she said, a faraway look in her eye. _"Dondray..._ I know I heard that name somewhere before."
CHAPTER FIFTY

### IN-LAWS AND OUTLAWS

Earl Finkter slid his Jag to a crooked stop and trotted to the front door of his office as fast as his fat legs would take him. His armpits were oceans. He clutched his oversize oxblood briefcase to his chest. It was overflowing with legal documents.

It had been a week of sweaty, ugly legal work after two years of fakery, perjury, forgery, and uttering. Then the last week of heavy lifting, all the goddamn courtroom work, fighting in the trenches, and for what? They had a jury award of three mil and then Dixie had gone off the deep end and fucked it all up.

He couldn't calm his nerves enough to slip his key into the old deadbolt. He finally scraped the key into the hole, yanked the door open and burst into the front reception area of his old brick office. He held his double-shot derringer out front like an advance scout. Its twin barrels scanned the room before him like they could see. He paused, cocked his ear, and focused his lone eye on the cellar door. Still locked, but suspiciously quiet. Maybe the nigger had escaped, maybe he was still hog-tied in duct tape downstairs. In either case he wasn't a threat.

Finkter poked around inside his office, but a cursory search for intruders revealed nothing. He locked the front door and blew down the hallway, directly into the rear conference room. His monocular peripheral vision confirmed the back door was shut tight. He ripped down his framed inspirational poster that his wall safe was hidden behind. Nobody would have thought to look behind that picture: an image of Mel Gibson, bloody, wailing in pain, nailed to a Latin cross under the word "SUCCESS."

Finkter's fingers danced upon the combo wheel, a practiced choreography, left and right as his lips mumbled the combination in real time, spinning the cute little ballerina of a dial until the latch handle could be clunked and the heavy wall safe door swung open.

He tore his hardshell oxblood leather briefcase open and ditched all the legal shit from the fucked-up trial. He shook that case upside down over the office floor until it was empty, scattering a supreme courtful of useless paperwork everywhere.

Still gripping his trusty derringer, he laid the briefcase open on his tabletop and began filling it with stacks and stacks of his glorious banded Benjamins. They were packaged ten thousand dollars per stack, each a quarter inch thick. He transferred the money using the available fingers of his left hand to balance the wads of cash against his right fist, his derringer fist. When the safe was empty, the big briefcase was overflowing. Finkter lay into it with all his weight, trying in vain to snap its locks shut. But it was just too much fucking money.

"I'll take that," said a strong feminine smoker's croak from the hood.

Finkter swiveled his lone eye toward the noise, finding himself glaring at the nigger insurance bitch. Her throat was wrapped in a gauze donut. She held an oily semi-auto sideways behind the off-white knuckles of her right fist, like the climax of a blaxploitation movie. It was a gun so cheap, it would be embarrassing to get shot by it. She had it pointed directly between his glass and good eyes. Unfortunately for her, however, her pistol was not as motivational as the cash in Finkter's briefcase, particularly since Finkter had both barrels of his .22 derringer focused on her cleavage like a baby rattlesnake, and _he_ knew that _she_ knew it.

"How much you want?" Finkter asked.

"All of it. Put it down and get the fuck out of here."

"Here, take this." The old one-eyed pseudo-lawyer juggled his briefcase, backhanded a single banded stack of hundreds, a wounded green pigeon that flapped into Launjeray's left tit and fluttered dead to the floor. "That's ten thousand for ya, fer ya trouble, now get the fuck outa here before somebody gets plugged."

"Drop the case, mothafucka," Launjeray said. "Cause I don't give one single fuck about you."

"Go ahead, pull the goddamn trigger," said Finkter, squinting down the sights of his pea shooter while gripping the cash-bulging briefcase under his sweat-drenched armpit. He scootched sideways in an arc around Launjeray.

"I'm warnin ya," Launjeray said.

"You ain't doing shit," he said. "Here's another ten thousand." And he tossed another wad on the hallway threshold. "Here's one more," he said, backing out of the room toward the front of the building. "And another, two more, that's fifty grand, take it and get the fuck outa here."

He figured if he gave the bitch the opportunity walk clean with fifty thousand, then she would find a shootout inconvenient. He kept his derringer aimed at her while he backed down the hall into the reception area. When he got to the front door, he juggled his overflowing briefcase while reaching for the doorknob. He turned his body to exit, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder, keeping his little pistol pointed at Launjeray. He opened the door.

An old black labrador retriever with gray jowls and a bullet hole through one ear lunged into the room, growling and baring its brown-rooted fangs like a rabid coyote. The dog's wide-open jaws clamped directly onto Finkter's tea bags like a crocodile in a death match with a garter snake.

The briefcase flew open above Finkter's head. Stacks of cash went flying all over the place. Finkter screamed bloody murder.

The wild dog jerked Finkter across the floor by his testicles.

When Launjeray took a step toward the money, Finkter still managed to twist around, point his derringer in her general direction, and fire once, barely missing her, all the while screaming in agony, because the dog was tearing his nutsack off.

The gunshot caused Launjeray to bust her ass, but she answered his shot with a warning shot of her own, firing T-Bone's crappy piece over Finkter's shoulder from her position on the floor.

The mad dog kept tearing at Finkter's gonads. Finkter kept screaming.

Launjeray crawled toward the cash.

Finkter beat at the dog and threatened Launjeray by swinging his derringer around toward her. "Get back!" Then he managed to wrap his legs around the dog, subdued the struggling beast for a millisecond, and lock a serious bead directly on the center of Launjeray's afro.

Launjeray aimed at Finkter's chest with both her hands and pulled her trigger in self-defense.

CLICK.

She pulled it again.

CLICK.

And again.

CLICK.

She looked at her gun in disbelief.

Finkter kept the growling dog squeezed between his legs, sighted down the little pistol's barrel with his solo eyeball, and grinned.

At that split-second, a .357 magnum cannon with a six-inch barrel exploded from a perpendicular angle, and a six-year-old pickaninny was laid on her ass by the 23-carat gold-plated Ruger Rattlesnake's kick. It was a huge, fiery roar followed by the spinning ricochet of a bullet that still had a mile to go, an atomic bomb that cracked windows, rang eardrums, and knocked pictures off all the walls.

The dog yelped and bolted out the front door. It was soaked crimson.

"I shot the dog!" the little girl cried. The center of her forehead was emblazoned with a pink imprint of the pistol's hammer where the recoil had planted it. Her flannel pajamas had a gray sunburst pattern imprinted from the gunpowder residue of the magnum's blowback. "I didn't mean to shoot the dog, momma! I swear! I tried to shoot the man!" She looked down the pistol's sight directly toward Finkter to illustrate.

"Don't shoot!" Finkter shouted from the floor. He dropped his derringer, laid on his belly, stretched his head and hands upwards like he was doing emergency yoga. "Please don't shoot, take it all, take everything, just don't shoot me!"

"I told you to stay in the car young lady!" Launjeray threw T-Bone's empty pistol away, then snatched the golden Ruger from her daughter's tiny hands. "Where'd you get this gun, little girl? You in trouble now."

"It was stuck down in the chair cushion right there," T'Whirl sniffled, pointing to Finkter's pink upholstered love seat.

Launjeray crossed into the hallway, scooped the cash back into the briefcase with her free hand and pointed with the shiny Rattlesnake toward the front door. "You get your ass back to the Voyager right now!"

T'Whirl ran headlong toward the front door, her arms outstretched, her palms facing forward to shove the door outward, when the door suddenly swung open before her. The little girl tripped forward due to her momentum, and crammed her sniffling snout into a soft clamshell.

The little girl's nose was buried in Dixie Clippens' pussy. It was the fertile pussy that had given birth to her father. It was the deadly pussy that had smothered and beaten the muff-smitten gimp wannabe rapist until he looked like a squashed and deformed cockroach.

But T'Whirl wasn't aware of those particular details concerning her own family history.

The confederate flag shoulder patches on Dixie's flabby white arms waved in full battle mode as Dixie leveled Theo's cheap blue steel pistol at Launjeray. "You. Fucking. Bitch." Dixie spat. "You fucking nigger insurance bitch, tailin my ass for ten bucks an hour: WE. MEET. AGAIN. YOU. GODDAMN. CUNT."

The little brown girl kicked the fat white lady's shins, alternating between the white one and the blue one. "Don't you talk to my momma like that!"

"Who in the fuck are you?" the southern white woman drawled, looking down between the tattooed triangle made by her gelatinous arms with the pistol double gripped at the far end.

"Say hello to your grandmother, T'Whirl," Launjeray said.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Dixie growled. "Stop trying to trick me! Gimme that goddamn money before I blow your fucking head off. It's my fucking money, I earned it fair and square."

"Hey! UNCLE! AIGHT? You two can have the money. Just let me go." Finkter pleaded from the floor. He dabbed at his bloody crotch. "My balls are bleedin. They're tore to shit by that dog!"

"She ain't my gramma!" The little girl flailed at Dixie's shins with her tiny flannel-covered feet.

"I'm gonna shoot your ass if you don't gimme the money and stop this little bitch from kickin me."

"Dixie! No!" Andre arrived, out of breath. He reached over Dixie's shoulder and pushed the pistol away before putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "Damn, so many No Parking signs around here, I just ran four blocks!"

"It's that nigger insurance bitch, Andre!" Dixie said. "And I don't know who the fuck this little pickaninny is!" She nodded toward the little girl who was still shitkicking at her shins. She pushed the girl away. "Stop it you little bitch!"

"They're _fam,_ baby."

"What kind of crack are you smokin?"

"They're fam," Andre said. "Blood fam. Fo real. That one's Da'Ndre's baby momma, and this one's their kid, your granddaughter. I don't know neither of their names."

"Bull. Fuckin. Shit. Are you out of your mind? She ain't no granddaughter of mine, she don't look nothin like me. STOP KICKIN ME YOU LITTLE BITCH!"

Everyone heard sirens approaching.

"Hey Andre!" Finkter shouted from the floor. "That dog tore my nuts half off. Can I please go now? I'm hurtin like a bitch. Y'all divide the money up between yourselves however you want."

"Shut the fuck up," Andre said to Finkter. Then he turned his attention back to Dixie. "Look at her and then look at me," he said, striking a pose like Che Guevara.

Dixie complied, snatching glances while still aiming the pistol at Launjeray. "You don't look nothin like her at all. Look at her nose, ain't nothin like yours."

"It's exactly like mine and exactly like Da'Ndre's."

"You crazy," she said. "Y'all look completely different."

"White people," Andre said.

"Her name's T'Whirl," said Launjeray.

"Twirl," Andre said, considering the name before bumping his fist twice to his chest, one inmate's gesture of utmost respect for another, pointing two extended fingers in a V at T'Whirl before opening his arms wide and grinning to display a matching pair of golden canines. "You an me — we fam, Twirl."

The little girl looked to her mother for guidance.

"Go ahead." Launjeray lowered her pistol. "Give your granddaddy a hug."

T'Whirl walked to Andre and gave him a curt hug before backing off and staring into his eyes. "Are you really my grandfather?"

"You gouged my eye out seventeen years ago, and now I'm bleedin to death outa my balls, Andre," Finkter pleaded. "We go way back, buddy, you and me. Can't we call it even and let bygones be bygones? You take the money, take it all. Just lemme get the fuck out before the cops get here, aight?"

Andre snatched Theo's shiny pistol from Dixie and — whatever the fuck he did with it, cock it or rack it or pop the magazine out and snap it back in or whatever — it sounded like a systematic preparation for a battlefield execution, a metal-on-metal murder plan with an audible zing at the end. The barrel of that cocked pistol kissed Finkter like Judas on Jesus. Kissed him hard. Made a bruise on his temple. Glued, screwed and tattooed. "Seventeen years mothafucka." Andre ground the barrel into the side of Finkter's grimace like he was putting out a cigar. "Fuck your goddamn bloody nuts."

Finkter squeezed his good eye shut but his fake one stayed wide open as if alarmed. Everyone waited for the gunshot. The silence was of such a long duration, it became socially awkward.

Dixie finally spoke. "You gonna kill the muthafucka or not?" she asked. "We ain't got all goddamn day."

"I got something for you to tell Da'Ndre," Finkter said. He opened a slit and peeked up at Andre.

"You ain't got nothin," Andre said. "You stallin is all."

"Tell Da'Ndre that he can't be criminally charged for them girls getting their thighs cut on his ride down in Florida. Tell him they can't even sue him civilly for that."

"What the fuck you talkin about?" Andre asked.

"He's running from what he thinks is a criminal charge down in Florida," Finkter said. "But Marblee Amusements just wanted to get rid of him. They don't want him testifying about how their machines are poorly maintained and unsafe."

Andre turned to Dixie. "You have any idea what the fuck he is talking about?"

"Naw," Dixie said, examining the sparkles on her toenails. "Go ahead and get it over with."

"They tricked him to make him run away," Finkter said. "Y'all tell him he don't need to run no more."

"I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about."

"I know what he's talking about," Launjeray said. "It's legal advice. I'll tell him. I'll tell Da'Ndre."

"You talkin about some white muthafucka down in Florida tryin to trick my boy into some bullshit?"

Finkter nodded. "Yep."

Andre considered the story, then uncocked the hammer by lowering it slowly under his thumb. "I ain't never hurt nobody I didn't have to." He released his grip on Finkter and stepped back.

"I'm leaving now," Finkter said. "Can I take my derringer with me, Andre? It has sentimental value. And I might need it sometime."

Andre snatched the derringer up, broke it open, ejected the spent casing and remaining live bullet, and tossed the little pistol onto the floor beside Finkter.

"Thank you, Andre," Finkter said. He grabbed his trusty firearm and commando crawled toward the door.

Andre watched him go.

"By the way," Dixie mused, turning away from Finkter's trail of blood. "Where _is_ my boy? Where is Da'Ndre?"

"He's gone," Launjeray said.

"Gone? Gone where?"

"Gone to find his momma."

"Well, that's _me._ _I'm_ his momma. He's lookin for _me._ " Dixie tilted her head toward the ceiling. Her face took on a faraway look. Then she came to a realization. "Omigod...was he by chance wearin a Aerosmith t-shirt and flip-flops?"

"Yes, ma'am, he was."

"Oh my god!" Dixie broke down onto her knees, screwed up her face, and wiped her eyes. "I kicked him in the balls," she said. "I feel like such a horrible mother." She swallowed three consecutive sobs, then looked back toward Launjeray, choking back her tears. "How'd he get loose? He was tied up down there."

"I let him go," Launjeray said.

"You let him go?" Dixie was aghast. "Why'd you do that?"

"Ain't that what you're supposed to do when you love somethin?"

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

### LIFE

Jonnie Christian Pagans stood on the bridge, illuminated by moonlight and the occasional sweep of headlights. He tilted his Yamaha keyboard over the rail, threatening to drop it into the river. It wasn't his favorite keyboard, but it was his second favorite. He hoped she'd say _NO JC! DON'T DO THAT! DON'T THROW YOUR BACKUP KEYBOARD INTO THE RIVER!_

"Go for it," Gaia said instead. "Throw that goddamn piece of shit in the river." The evening breeze invaded the underside of her psychedelic hippie sundress, puffing it into a psilocybin mushroom around her midsection. She slapped the bottom of his hand, nearly knocking the keyboard off the bridge into the river below, but he caught it before it fell.

He didn't expect the attitude she was projecting. "You just want to give it all up, Gaia? You wanna give up JC's Warriors, everything we've worked for?"

"Jonnie, it ain't _just like that,_ " she said. "We've spent the last ten years on the road. A whole fucking _decade_ of our lives. We only took seventeenth place in Evangelipalooza, even with Nimrod on vocals, and he's a good singer. You heard the lead he jammed on that Strat. It sounded like Jimi Hendrix. And we still didn't even get close to winning a fucking Christian Rock competition. Doesn't that tell you something?"

"Tells me we can do it, Gaia, we can," JC said. "Maybe next year we can be in the top ten."

"The top ten in Christian Rock is like being top ten in a pile of shit," she said. "The number one Christian Rock band in the whole world is nobody compared to the worst band in secular rock."

"Secular Rock? What the hell is _Secular Rock?_ "

"Jonnie, remember, think back a long time ago, like it was in a previous life. You got your Associates Degree in Accounting. Remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. So what?"

"Why'd you get that degree if you weren't planning on using it?"

"You know full well that degree is my backup plan," JC said. "Just in case..."

"Jonnie, anyone who goes to the trouble of spending seven years getting an Associates Degree in a Backup Plan is just fucking around wasting time with all the other stuff they call their dreams." She lit up a V-Slim.

"Bullshit, Gaia!"

"Why didn't you get a degree in music then?"

JC was seized by an involuntary expulsion of carbon dioxide that could have been mistaken for a hiccup or sneeze. It was followed by a slight heave of his shoulders. Two droplets raced over his cherubic cheekbones. JC was in fear of losing his composure.

"What's wrong now?" Gaia asked, exhaling smoke from her nostrils like a French socialite. "Not that I really want to know."

"I miss Bama," the Jesus imposter said, wiping a snot drop from the tip of his nose.

"You miss _Bama_?" Gaia was incredulous. "You hated that fucking dog."

"I didn't hate him," JC blubbered, "I just didn't want to share your love with anyone else, Gaia!"

"Oh Jesus Flippin Christ," she said, focusing on his twin immature incisors to keep from snorting. "That dog sucked a fat dick and you know it! It was a puking, shitting, pissing, mangy rodent!"

"Really?" JC was so happy he found himself openly laughing through his tears.

"Yeah, really."

JC blubbered. "I thought you'd hate me for it."

"For what?"

"For putting him off the bus."

" _You put Bama off the bus?"_

He nodded, a big teary grin on his face. "I'm so happy you don't hate me for that."

"You. Never. Told me. _YoufuckingputBamaoffthebus."_

"I thought you knew."

"There was a hole in the floor, I thought he crawled out on his own," Gaia said.

" _There was a hole in the floor?"_

"You fucking asshole!"

"Gaia, listen to me, please, I love you, I really do, I didn't mean for anything bad to happen to Bama. And I promise I don't believe all that Jesus crap, that Jesus _shit_ , it's just for show, alright?" He held her shoulders. "Let's get back on track, you and me, the two of us. Together. We'll get another lead guitarist. We can do this, we really can."

"Listen, Jonnie," Gaia said. "It's _over_ , aight? It's either me and you together, settling down in Springfield, or it's goodbye _forfuckingever_."

JC stared at her.

"We can play a few gigs around town now and then. Cover tunes — no Christian shit, I'm done with that. We can do our Captain & Tennille at the Holiday Inn. They like our Captain & Tennille, remember? And remember how we do Abba? We can do Abba every Tuesday night at the Roadkill Cafe. In fact, I've already cleared that with Donna."

JC set his jaw and stared at a faraway galaxy. "I hate Donna and I'm not playing Captain & Tennille at the Holiday Inn," he said while studying astronomy. If he had glanced at her face, he would have noticed the teardrop. "And Abba sucks, Gaia, you know that."

"I'm tired of traveling around like a goddamn gypsy," she said. "I'm tired of living hand to mouth, tired of faking all this Christian shit, tired of watching you act like a goddamn pedophile on stage, and I'm ten weeks fucking pregnant."

JC came back to earth and focused his eyes on his wife's abdomen. "You're _pregnant_?"

"Yeah, I'm _pregnant_ ," she said, punctuating the statement with a huge drag that burned the cigarette halfway to its filter. "Knocked up. Bun in the oven. With child. _Preggie._ And I'm married to a goddamn _accountant,_ aight?"

She shoved the keyboard out of his hands. They watched it tumble through the air, down toward the quiet river like a space station crashing from orbit in silent slo-mo, and then it made a splash, momentarily disappeared, bobbed up again, and floated downstream.

"Awwww, what did you do _that_ for?"

"You are going to get yourself a fucking haircut, get your butt-ugly front teeth bonded, start up your own tax return shop, and settle down with me and your kid, forever. In Springfield."

JC watched his keyboard wobbling across rapids downriver. "Ya gotta quit smoking, Gaia."

"All I want is a few goddamn peaceful weekends, Jonnie," she said. "Can we do that together? You and me and whatever kinda weirdo pops out from down here?" She toked her Slim down to the beige-tinted cotton and threw her butt into the lazy water below, where it drowned with a hiss and chased JC's dreams.

"I ain't quittin music," he said. "I ain't." JC looked into his wife's eyes as Gaia approached him. Her twin baby blues merged into a pastel iced donut, Nordic irises colliding to encircle her magical black abyss, flashing to the rhythm of the passing headlights.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

### PARADISE BOUND

A flunky waved his magic wand all around Earl Finkter's filthy aura, up and down the old crook's pants legs, around his crotch and up the crack of his ass. Something made it start beeping.

"Titanium assbone," Finkter said to the punk while displaying huge sweat stains under his arms. He knew the Homeland Security jerkoffs were so stupid, they couldn't tell the difference between a bomb fuse and a tampon string anyway. He fished his car keys out of his back pocket and showed them to the kid. Maybe they'd accept that as an excuse for the goddamn beeping wand, and then they wouldn't find his derringer.

Before the idiot could satisfy himself that Finkter wasn't hiding an incendiary device, a couple of new uniforms entered the picture. They were different uniforms, a pair of swaggering hotties with spa hair, double-studded earlobes, and bright bleached enamel. They flashed their badges when they should have flashed their tits. They identified themselves as US Immigration.

"Sir, may we please see your passport?" The dominant one was a hot blonde with conical headlights stretching her bureaucratic blouse to bursting. The submissive one spread her stance like she was taking a piss in a men's urinal, and then rested her fair claw on her blue steel sidearm.

Finkter fumbled for the passport he was using, one of his best, the one he had been using without fail for years, time tested and proven. He had nothing to fear, but his trembling hands and weeping armpits suggested otherwise.

The two hotties compared the photo with the face. Dominatrix snapped a radio from her belt, called in the passport number like it was phone sex, while the other narrowed her stare directly into Finkter's correct pupil.

"Affirm," some surfer dude on the Immigration walkie-talkie called back.

"Sir, we need for you to come with us."

"Am I being detained?"

"Yessir, as a matter of fact, you are under arrest."

"For what?"

One of the hotties walked around behind him and pulled handcuffs off her belt. "Sir, please put your hands behind your back."

Finkter knew it was only a remote possibility these two chicks were inviting him to a B&D gang-bang. So he did the only thing he could, his final option.

He ran.

He ran just like he had been running all his life. He ran from shame. He ran from society. He ran from mommy and daddy and Jesus. He ran from his own true self. His own true identity.

He ran as fast as his chubby little 63-year-old legs would take him — about half as fast as those two immigration bitches.

So then he did the only thing he could, his _absolute_ final option.

He reached around behind his back and grabbed his derringer.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

### PARADISE FOUND

Finkter's quasi-ocean view house was cluttered with construction debris. Its naked studs were sunbleached and warped. Its pool was rancid, half-full of mosquito-infested rainwater. The roof had been abandoned after only a single course of tar paper, which was now ripped, flapping in the Caribbean night breeze like a pirate's flag.

Andre jackhammered Dixie on the wrinkled Canadian plywood that had been completely delaminated by Tropical Storm Pauline three years before. He fantasized that he was the conquering lion of Africa during the sacking of Richmond in 1865, and then became even more aroused by switching to a scene in which he was the iron-willed lifer enjoying a conjugal visit from his neurotic, ultra-low-self-esteemed prison pen pal he met through an ad he placed in _Iron Horse_ magazine.

Dixie surprised Andre by removing the dentures she had acquired during his long incarceration. She tossed her false teeth aside and proceeded to engage his horny thang in a most peculiar and interesting way. He returned the favor with a clit-lapping worthy of a rapidly melting DQ cone on a baking hot July day. Then he slid his black cock into her white pussy where it belonged.

"Andre?" Dixie queried in the heat of their passion.

"Yeah baby?" Andre didn't miss a stroke.

"What are we gonna do, honey?"

"I been plannin this for seventeen years, sugar tits," Andre said while making sweet love to his beau. "I got it covered, don't you worry your little self none."

"How's our little Da'Ndre gonna find us here?"

"I actually don't have the exact answer to that question yet, Dixiepoo," Andre said. "That part of the plan didn't work out so good. But we'll figure somethin out."

Dixie wrapped her legs around Andre's back. "They got ebay down here?"

Andre found the perfect angle. "I don't know baby, why you want ebay?"

"I got fifteen thousand in my paypal now." Dixie was nearing another climax.

"You can use paypal for more than just ebay." Andre pounded the love of his life like an A-list porn star.

"You sure?" Dixie gasped.

"My cellie was a hacka," Andre said. Then he froze in mid stroke.

"Don't stop, baby, come on, whassa matta?" Dixie grabbed her lover's shoulders and shook him. But Andre was gazing off into the Caribbean sky like he had discovered a new constellation. "I knew I forgot something," he said.

"What you forget, baby?"

"I forgot to cut that mailman outa that duct tape."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

### TO BE READ ALOUD

My head's out the minivan

The wind's in my face

Alpo cans all over the place

T'Whirl's in the back seat

Her mom's at the wheel

I can't believe I got such a great deal!

The clouds are all puffed up — look! There's a bunny!

That briefcase still stinks like it's stuffed full of money.

(wag)

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

### EASTER SUNDAY

The old lady saw nothing but darkness in her central vision. The periphery of her eyesight was an unfocused bluster of multicultural hands in blue rubber gloves. She was living in a sanitized circle of medical activity. Foreigners wiped betadine, ripped and reset bandages, punched needles through the stubborn leather of her sun-cured, liver-spotted skin.

Curry munchers, ching chongs, beaners and mulletards were her sole caretakers. Underpaid, under-performing, under-her-skin goyim with endless needles, pulling them out and shoving new ones in, like she was some heroin junkie's pincushion. And the fucking robotic blood pressure machine, that goddamn inflatable nazi armband cutting off her blood supply every ten minutes, numbing her fingers when who the fuck cared about her blood pressure anyway? Nobody wanted that information.

The sound of flip-flops grew between the usual sticky squeaks of white rubber soles. Brown shins invaded her halo of eyesight, and a new pair of hands, naked and brown, enveloped her scrawny, time-tortured, trembling bony fingers.

"There's no more rings to steal. I divorced that son of a bitch and sold all my jewelry fifteen years ago," the old lady said. "How come you aren't wearing gloves? ISN'T THERE A SINGLE GODDAMN JEWISH DOCTOR IN THE WHOLE BUILDING?"

"It's me, Mom. It's Da'Ndre."

"Da'Ndre?" Without a moment's hesitation, the old lady wept like Jesus on the cross. It was instantaneous extreme weeping. Twin strands of clear snot rappelled from her nostrils toward a gnarly, wrinkled nipple visible through a malfunction in her hospital gown. The snot strand lengthened, extending until it snuck as close as God's fingertip in the Sistine Chapel, almost kissing her nipple, then she sucked it back up and exhaled a wail and snot bubble that didn't turn a single nurse's head. She looked Da'Ndre in the eye, but she couldn't see him at all. "Who are you again?"

"Da'Ndre," he said. "The boy you adopted, when I was twelve."

"Oh yeah, I remember you," the old lady said. "Your father was such an asshole. It was his idea to get you circumcised, not mine. I didn't know anything about it until after it happened. IS THERE A WHITE MALE JEWISH DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? PREFERABLY HOMOSEXUAL?"

Her cataract lenses sparkled like spinning silver fishing lures inside her eyeballs, even though she couldn't see through them.

"All I get here are niggers and needles," the old Jewish woman said. "Who are you again?" She panned her gaze up toward the speckled drop ceiling as if she were admiring the majesty of the milky way.

"Da'Ndre."

"You're that African-American boy we adopted."

"Yes ma'am," Da'Ndre said. "That's me."

"You know, Irving gave up on you, but I never did." She squinted at Da'Ndre as if she was focusing on a ghost. "You're still my darling little boy. You know that, don't you?" And then she broke into tears again, weeping mucus. "You always were and you always will be."

"I'm sorry I put you through all that stuff," Da'Ndre said.

"What stuff?" She stopped crying as if she had completely forgotten why she had been crying in the first place. Da'Ndre grabbed a tissue and wiped her nose.

"I'm Da'Ndre."

"You're that African-American boy Irving got circumcised," she said. "You know I divorced that son of a bitch, don't you? I caught him banging some shiksa. It was the secretary down at the synagogue. That guy was so masculine, you would have never figured he was a fag."

"What guy?"

"The secretary down at the synagogue," she said. "I got all Irving's money but now look at me, all I got now is these goddamn slanty eyed orientals shoving needles in my veins."

Da'Ndre touched his adoptive mother's brow, pushed a lock of her gray hair. "Momma, don't talk like that," he said. "Don't you remember teaching me we are all one race? You always said we're one race, everyone, the human race, momma, remember? We're all just one people."

"You try laying here all day with a bunch of goddamn hillbillies sticking needles in the backs of your hands. ISN'T THERE A JEWISH DOCTOR HERE ANYWHERE? A GAY WHITE MALE JEWISH DOCTOR? Who are you again?"

"Da'Ndre."

"You're that African-American boy we adopted."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, you're a handful," she said, rattling a stilted breath of cannula-fed oxygen. "Do you have a family, Da'Ndre? Do you have a wife and kids?"

"Yeah, kinda," Da'Ndre said.

"Kinda? You either got them or your don't," she said. "Where are they? Did you bring them here?"

"No, ma'am. They're not here."

"Who's not here?"

"My family."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No, ma'am."

"Are you gonna find them?"

"I'm gonna try."

"Try what?"

"To find them."

"Find who?"

"My family."

"Oh." Esther Goldstein considered this information. Then she lifted her arm, the one closest to Da'Ndre _._ A trio of IV tubes dangled from it. She flopped her elbow around Da'Ndre's ears like it was a head-hug from a cardboard Halloween skeleton. Then she raised her other arm, curled a loose fist, and rubbed her knuckles against the crown of her son's knotty dreads with the understated exuberation of a Lutheran baptism.

As she rubbed Da'Ndre's scalp, she revealed a tattoo on the underside of her arm that Da'Ndre had never seen before. It read: _A-23217._ It looked like somebody had poked it there with a sewing needle dipped in a bottle of India ink.

"Sing me a song like you used to, Da'Ndre."

Da'Ndre looked around at the staff going about their business. It was a clinical environment. "I don't sing much anymore, momma."

"Sing me a goddamn song, Da'Ndre."

Da'Ndre cleared his throat, glanced around, and whispered a song into the old woman's ear. _"Mi she-bei-rach a-vo-tei-nu,"_ he sang. _"Av-ra-ham, Yitz-chak, v'Ya-a-kov..."_

"Oh no, _puh-leeze_ , not that shit," Esther Goldstein said, releasing Da'Ndre from her headlock. She held a hand flat over top of her eyebrows, like she was saluting. "I've had it up to _here_ with that shit." Her hand dropped back onto the bedsheet like it had nowhere else to go.

"Sing me some soul music, Da'Ndre. Sing me some Motown like you used to."

THE END
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

I hope you enjoyed _Peaceful Sundays._ This is my first published novel. Please do me a favor and  leave a review right now.

I'm currently working on _Keeker Boy,_ a story about a teenage immigrant seeking freedom in America. Stop by jimmypete.com and sign up for a free advance copy.

Y'all be good!

— Jimmy Pete
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my family for their support and understanding. Thanks to my editors Erica Ellis and M.M. Chabot. Thanks to those who have provided feedback on this novel. Thanks to the Washington DC standup comedy community. Thanks to those who have given me writing jobs over the years. Thanks to all my school teachers, _except Mr Tickle._ Thanks to my photographer, Christopher Frederick of Theron Productions, and my cover designer, Domi at Inspired Cover Designs. And finally, thanks to all those whom I have left out.

## CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE - THE SABBATH

CHAPTER TWO - A FEW DAYS EARLIER

CHAPTER THREE - TUESDAY AFTERNOON

CHAPTER FOUR - SUNDAY NIGHT

CHAPTER FIVE - COURT

CHAPTER SIX - MONDAY 2:13 A.M.

CHAPTER SEVEN - FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO

CHAPTER EIGHT - THE TICKET TO PARADISE

CHAPTER NINE - BEST FRIENDS

CHAPTER TEN - SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

CHAPTER ELEVEN - BIRTHDAY

CHAPTER TWELVE - MONDAY MORNING

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - GLORY

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE SETUP

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - PROBABLY SOME RANDOM THURSDAY

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - MONDAY NOON

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - EVIDENCE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - MONDAY NIGHT

CHAPTER NINETEEN - DESTINY

CHAPTER TWENTY - TUESDAY 3:17 A.M.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - TO BE READ ALOUD

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - ONE DOWN

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - JUST ANOTHER DAY ON THE ROAD

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - GOOD FRIDAY

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - CAVALRY HILL

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - WEDNESDAY NIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - NOT SO GOOD FRIDAY

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - TUESDAY EVENING

CHAPTER THIRTY - THURSDAY 1:11 A.M.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - THE ESCAPE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - TO BE READ ALOUD

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - ONE SUNDAY A LONG TIME AGO

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - TO BE READ ALOUD

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - DEATH

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - THE RUNAWAY

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - TO BE READ ALOUD

CHAPTER FORTY - FRIDAY, AROUND MID-DAY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - EARLIER THAT MORNING

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - FRIDAY NIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE - HOLED UP

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR - REFLECTIONS

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE - THE LINEUP

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX - BACK IN COURT

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - USPS

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT - THE SETTLEMENT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE - MEANWHILE

CHAPTER FIFTY - IN-LAWS AND OUTLAWS

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE - LIFE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO - PARADISE BOUND

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE - PARADISE FOUND

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR - TO BE READ ALOUD

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE - EASTER SUNDAY

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

