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Skink let loose an avalanche of laughter. "Son, I'm fairly immune to blunt objects and sharp instruments."

Edie's pitch was more blunt. "Pull the trigger," she said to Snapper, "and kiss your hurricane money goodbye. Forty-seven grand goes out the window with my brains."

Snapper's bad mandible began to creak; a sign, Skink hoped, of possible cogitation. The moron was deciding between the long-term rewards from the money and the short-term satisfaction from shooting her. Apparently it wasn't an easy choice.

Skink said, "Consider it an IQ test, chief."

Impulsively Bonnie Lamb opened the cold Dr Pepper and poured it under her blouse; a fizzing caramel torrent from the cleft of her neck to her tummy.

"Stop!" Snapper yelled. "You stop that crazy shit!"

"I'm suffocating in here"

"I don't care! I don't fucking care."

Bonnie was so light-headed from the heat that Snapper's fury didn't register. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm really sorry, but it's a hundred degrees in this stupid truck."

The soda pop soaked through her top, so that Snapper could see the lacy outline of a bra and a pale damp oval of bare belly. Skink asked Edie Marsh to put on the air conditioner.

"I tried. It's broken." Edie's voice was empty.

"Don't even think about getting naked," Snapper warned Bonnie, "or I'll kill you." His head jangled with loud voices, some his own. In exasperation he shouted: "You don't think I'd shoot all you crazy shits? You don't believe me? Check the fuckin' hole in the roof a this Jeep!"

Yeah, Edie thought. Matches the one between your ears.

"Can we get on with this?" she said sourly. "It is awfully damn humid."

As Bonnie's skin cooled off, she heard herself apologizing repeatedly. Yet it was absurd to be ashamed. Why should she care what two common criminals thought of her?

But she did care. She couldn't help herself. It was the way she'd been raised: A proper young woman did not douse herself with soda pop in front of total strangers, even felons.

"It's all right," Skink said. "You're scared, that's all."

"I guess I am."

Snapper heard her. With a vulgar chuckle, he said, "Good. Scared is damn well what you ought to be." He was halfway to shitfaced.

Edie drove slowly, fretfully. The man was a keeling wreck. How could they possibly pull this off? She devised a fantasy scenario: If Snapper passed out drunk, she'd push him from the Jeep. Then she'd tell the eccentric couple in the back seat that she was very, very sorry-it was all a terrible misunderstanding. She'd promise them Snapper's share of the Midwest Casualty settlement if they'd forget the whole dreadful evening. She would drive them back to Miami without delay and (to prove she was basically a decent person) offer to replace the gold ring stolen from the lady trooper. The unconscious Snapper would be run over on the highway by a passing shrimp truck and no longer pose a menace to society, or to Edie's future.

Unfortunately, Snapper wasn't nodding off. The Johnnie Walker bottle lay capped on the dashboard. Now he was playing with the gun, spinning the cylinder and humming mischievously.

Edie Marsh said, "Could you please not do that?"

Snapper gurgled crapulously, his jaw jutting like a window box. "You're so hot and sweaty, Edie, you oughta do what she almost done. Take off your clothes."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you."

"I would love it. Wouldn't y'all?" He waggled the .357 at Skink and Bonnie Lamb. "Come on, wouldn't ya like to see Edie's tits? They're cuties."

Bonnie felt crummy that she'd given Snapper the idea.

Skink said, "Speaking for myself, yes, I'm sure they're delightful. But some other time."

Edie Marsh felt herself blush. Nobody spoke. Snapper began to hum again, accompanied by the metered squeak of the windshield wipers. Ahead, on the ocean side of the highway, Edie saw the electric-blue sign for the Paradise Palms Resort Motel.

Skink shook Levon Stichler out of the carpet, dumping him like a sack of flour on the terrazzo. Somebody yanked off the gag and the blindfold.

The old man's eyes watered at the sudden brightness.

A woman's voice: "You again."

Levon blinked until a face came into focus-the redhead from the hurricane house at Turtle Meadow. The chiffon scarf, Levon's blinder, dangled from her festively painted fingernails. Standing next to the redhead was a wild-looking blonde. She said, "What's your name, sweetheart?"

The redhead wore a diaphanous black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. The blonde wore a silver lame teddy that made her shimmer like the hood ornament on a Silver Shadow. The air was sugary with perfume; pure heaven, after three hours of gagging on mildew and carpet fuzz. When Levon Stichler sat up, he found himself in the center of an attentive circle: the two prostitutes, the thug in the pinstriped suit, the pretty long-haired brunette, another young woman, with creamy skin and delicate features, and a large bearded man wearing a flowered shower cap. The bearded man was polishing a glass eye on the sleeve of his jacket.

They were gathered in a small motel room. Levon Stichler said: "What's this all about?" The prostitutes introduced themselves. Bridget and Jasmine.

Snapper dropped to a crouch. Roughly he pinched the back of the old man's neck. "You tried to kill me, 'member?"

"It was a mistake. I told you."

"Here's the deaclass="underline" You're gone stay down here two, maybe three days with the girls. They're gone fuck ya and blow ya till you can't walk. Plus they gone take some pitchers."

Levon was skeptical. The man reeked of liquor and spoke as if he had a mouthful of marbles.

"Just shoot me and get it over with."

"We're not shooting anybody." It was the pretty brunette. "Honest," she said, "long as you behave."

Snapper said, "Maybe you're too old to get it up or maybe you like guys-I don't fuckin' care. Point is, you stay here with these girls till I call and say it's OK to leave. Then what you do, you take your sweet time gettin' back to Miami. By that I mean, stand on the highway with your thumb out. Unnerstand?"

Levon stammered and blinked. Snapper swatted him twice across the face.

Edie Marsh said: "I don't think Mister Stichler realizes the alternative. The alternative is we go to the cops and tell how you tried to murder Snapper and rape me with that trailer spike. Your family'll think you've gone senile. The photographs won't help-Grandpa doing pony rides with two call girls."

Levon glanced up at Bridget and Jasmine. They were large and scary. He could tell they'd worked together before.

"Think of it as a vacation," said Edie. "Hey, you're allowed to have fun,"

"I wish I could."

"Uh-oh." Bridget knelt beside him. "Prostate?"

The old man nodded somberly. "It was removed last year."

Jasmine told him to cheer up. "We'll think of something."

Skink, fitting his glass eye into its socket, advised Levon Stichler to do what he was told. "It's still better than getting shot."

Bridget said, "Gee, thanks."

Snapper paid the prostitutes from a wad of the stolen roofing money, which they counted, divided and put away. They turned their backs so he wouldn't peek inside their pocketbooks, which bulged with the other cash given to them ten minutes earlier by Avila, and ten minutes before that by the good-looking young man with the .38 Special.

"Is there ice in the bucket?" Bonnie Lamb asked. The hooker named Jasmine told her to help herself. Bonnie scooped two handfuls of cubes and pressed them to her cheeks.