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He caught her elbow and turned her to face him, and looked down into her eyes and said, “What are you afraid of, Mary Margaret?”

“Nothing, leave me alone. I have to get home.”

“Why?”

“Because... I’m packing. I’m getting out of here. Look,” she said, plaintively, “I finally got the money I need, and I’m splitting, so leave me alone, okay? Let me just get the fuck out of here.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had this city.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Denver. I hear the scene’s good there. Anything’s better than here.”

“Who gave you the money?”

“A girlfriend. She’s a waitress at the Yellow Bagel. She makes good money. It’s only a loan, I’ll pay her back. Look, I got to catch a plane, okay? I got to go now. I don’t like it here. I don’t like anything about this city. I don’t like the look of it, I don’t like the people, I don’t like...”

“Where’ve you been hiding?”

“I haven’t been hiding. I was busy trying to raise some bread, that’s all. I had to talk to a lot of people.”

“You were hiding, Mary Margaret. Who from?”

“Nobody.”

“Who the hell are you running from?”

“Nobody, nobody.”

“What was Sandy doing in that abandoned building on the eighteenth?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Were you there, too?”

“No.”

Where were you?”

“I told you. In Boston. We were both in Boston.”

Where in Boston?”

“I don’t know.”

“How’d Sandy burn his foot?”

“Burn? It’s not burned, it’s...”

“It’s burned. How’d it happen?”

“I don’t know. Please, I have to...”

“Who killed Adam Villers?”

“Adam? How... how do you...?”

“I know his name, and I know when he got here, and I know his friends have been to see Sandy. Now how about it, Mary Margaret?”

“Please, please...”

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or...?”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said, and suddenly covered her face with her hands and began sobbing. They stood in the rain, Mary Margaret weeping into her hands, Carella watching her for only a moment before he said, “You’d better come with me.”

The three of them had only arrived a few days before, and still hadn’t caught up with their friend, the blond one with the muscles, I don’t know his name. So they were flopping in the building on Harrison when they first made contact with Sandy. It was Adam Villers who came into the shop. He was a decent person, Adam. There’s nothing that says bikies can’t be decent. He was honestly trying to set something up. And it cost him his life.

What he did was he came into the shop to tell Sandy how much he liked his work. He’s a good artist, you know, a really good one, well, you saw his stuff, you know how good he is. But he just wasn’t selling much, and it costs a lot to cast those things in bronze, and he was running low on bread, which is why Adam’s idea sounded like such a good one. Adam said the guys he ran with could pack the stuff in their bike bags, and try to sell it, you know, like wherever they traveled. He said they couldn’t pay what Sandy was asking in the shop, but they’d take a lot of it, you see, and he could make it up in volume. So Sandy agreed to go up there — to where they were living on Harrison — and talk price with them, to see if it would be worth it to him. Adam really thought... I mean, Adam had no idea what the other two were after. You read a lot about bikies, and you get all these ideas about them, but Adam was okay. He really dug the work Sandy was doing, and figured we could all make a little money out of it. That’s why he took us there that night.

They were living in two rooms on the fifth floor. One of the rooms had a mattress in it. In the other room, they had built a small fire in the center of the floor. The one called Yank was trying to fix something from his bike when we came in. I don’t know what it was, something that had fallen off his bike. He was trying to hammer a dent out of it. Anyway, we all sat around the fire, and Sandy offered them some grass, and we smoked a little while Adam explained his idea about buying Sandy’s work at discount and selling it on the road, which he figured would pay for all their traveling expenses. The one called Ox said that he had looked over the stuff in the shop window the other day and thought the girl was very sexy.

I think that was when I first began to get scared.

But... anyway, we... we went on talking about how much the sculpture was worth. Adam was still very excited about the whole thing, and trying to figure out how much Sandy should get for pieces that were this big or that big, you know, trying to work out a legitimate business deal. I mean, that’s why we’d gone up there. Because it looked like a good way to make a little bread. So all of a sudden Ox said How much do you want for the girl?

We were all, I guess, I mean, surprised, you know? Because it came out of the blue, like, when we were talking about Sandy’s work and all, and we just sat there sort of stunned and Ox said You hear me? How much you want for the girl?

What girl? Sandy said.

This one, Ox said, and reached over and... and poked my breast, poked his finger at my breast.

Hey, come on, Adam said, knock it off, Ox, we’re here to talk about the guy’s work, okay?

And Ox said I’d rather talk about the guy’s girl.

Sandy got up and said Come on, Mary Margaret, let’s get out of here, and that was when Ox hit him and it all started. I screamed, I guess, and Ox hit me, too, hard, he punched me in the ribs, it still hurts where he hit me. They... Adam started to yell at them, and Yank grabbed him from behind and held his arms while Ox... Ox dragged Sandy over to the fire and pulled off his sneaker and stuck his foot in the flames, and told him next time they asked a question about the price of something he should answer nice instead of being such a wise guy. Sandy passed out, and I began screaming again because... Sandy was... his foot was all black and... and Ox hit me again and threw me on the floor and that was when Adam broke away from Yank, to try to help me. They both turned on him. Like animals. Like sharks. Like attacking their own, do you know? In frenzy, do you know? They went after him, they chased him down the hallway, they... I heard sounds like... hammering, I knew later it was hammering, and I heard Adam screaming, and I ran down the hall and saw what they had done and fainted. I don’t know what they did to me while I was unconscious. I was... I was bleeding bad when I woke up... but they were gone, thank God, they were gone at last.

I didn’t know what to do. Sandy could hardly walk and there... there was a dead man down the hall, Adam was dead down the hall. I... put Sandy’s arm over my shoulder, and we started down the steps, all I could think of was getting away from there. Have you seen that place? The steps are covered with all kinds of crap, it’s like walking through a junkyard. But I got him down to the street, he was in such pain, oh God, he kept moaning, and we couldn’t find a taxi, there are never any taxis in this neighborhood. But finally we got one, and I took him over to the clinic at Buenavista Hospital, and they treated his foot, and we hoped it was all over, we hoped we’d seen the last of them.

They came back to the shop the next day. They said we’d better keep our mouths shut about what happened or the same thing would happen to us. We made up the story about Boston, we knew the police might get to us, we figured we needed an alibi. And... we’ve been waiting for them to leave, praying they’d go back to California, leave us alone, get out of our lives.