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“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Right there.” Robert strode over and grabbed Tim in a forceful embrace, giving him a faceful of rough shoulder fabric laced with nicotine. He shook Tim once, hard, and set him down. Though Robert was a good several inches shorter than Tim, he was undeniably more solid, his thick arms and legs seeming part of a single, immutable block.

Tim took a step back, away. “What’s next? A victory lap, then we douse Rayner with the Gatorade cooler?”

His comment was lost in the excitement; Dumone alone took note, fixing Tim with his solemn blue eyes.

Rayner clicked through the channels. News updates all around.

“-perhaps from a rival militia group or an FBI operative-”

The Stork raised his arms like a traveling preacher. “It has begun.”

“This will certainly raise public visibility,” Rayner said. “And contribute to the execution’s deterrence potential.”

Robert cracked a pleased smile. “Yeah, I’d say blowing Motherfucker’s head off during prime time will sure as shit get the message out.”

“It’s sufficiently high-profile that now we can back off and do safer, isolated hits,” Dumone said. “Everyone will still know it’s us.”

Robert finally sat, his knee hammering up and down, his hands curling the thick phone book.

The Man on the Street-this incarnation a puffy-jacketed one with a goatee-offered his opinion to an out-of-frame reporter. “I say good riddance, man. A scumsuck like that, sneaks through the law on some”-his next two words, presumably too colorful for the airwaves, were bleeped out-“got the death penalty he deserves. I’m a father of three children, and I don’t want some guy like that out there, who we all know killed a bunch of kids.” He leaned toward the camera now, in hi-mom posture. “Hey, I say whoever smoked the guy, if you’re out there, good job, man.” He flashed dueling thumbs-ups before the camera cut away.

“Well,” Ananberg said, “now we have our moral sanction.”

“Don’t be a snob, Jenna,” Rayner said. “We don’t just want to hear from judges and slick media commentators.”

“Yes, how we loathe slick media commentators.”

Rayner ignored the barb. “I’ll have a full media report ready by the time of our next meeting. Friday evening, shall we say?”

Tim glanced at the painting of Rayner’s son, behind which the safe and Kindell’s case binder waited. Rayner followed his gaze and winked. “Two cases down. Five to go.”

“You boys did well,” Dumone said. “You should feel great.”

“Right,” Tim said.

•Robert and Mitchell were waiting by the Toyota truck. As Tim passed, he took note of the tiny clean circles on the otherwise-dirty back license plate, right around the screws, indicating a recent change. Robert caught his arm and gave a squeeze. It seemed as if a good clench could snap Tim’s humerus.

“Let’s go for an unwinder,” Robert said.

The Stork stood for a moment, as if waiting for an invitation to be extended, then climbed into his van and drove away.

Tim stood by his car.

“Come on,” Mitchell said. “The post-op drink. A tradition we dare not break.”

Robert held up the phone book he’d taken from inside, letting it fall open to the section he’d marked with a thumb. LIQUOR STORES.

Robert stepped aside, and, after a hesitation, Tim slid across the front seat to the middle. The brothers climbed in on either side of him, the doors slamming in unison. Mitchell drove fast and skillfully. Tim sat hunched in the middle, the breadth of two sets of Masterson shoulders leaving him little torso space. Deltoids poked into him unforgivingly on the turns, pounding from Tim’s subconscious his relief that Robert and Mitchell were-ostensibly-on his side.

Mitchell stopped at a liquor store off Crenshaw and headed into the store. He emerged with a brown paper bag, about two six-packs wide, which he threw in the back. He pulled off his black Members Only jacket, rolled a pack of Camels in his white T-shirt sleeve, and climbed back in.

“That was a hell of a bang you built,” Tim said.

Mitchell kept his eyes on the road. “I know a few things.”

He drove the speed limit, threading through downtown. When he turned off Temple, Tim realized where they were going. They arrived at a grand metal gate, the sole break in the ten-foot fence surrounding Monument Hill. Three parallel wires ran atop the fence at one-foot intervals, emitting a low hum. Mitchell rolled down the window, removed an electronic access-control card from the glove box, and held it out the window before the post-mounted pad of the proximity reader. The card emitted a series of blips as it searched for the matching frequency, and then the gate clicked open with a resonant shifting of inner bolts.

Mitchell tapped the access-control card against his thigh. “The keys to the city. A little gift from the Stork.”

They left asphalt behind, driving up the well-worn dirt path, the Census Memorial’s one-hundred-foot silhouette breaking the purple-black sky above. On the radio Willie Nelson was crooning about all the girls he’d loved before.

When Mitchell put the truck in park, neither he nor Robert made to get out. It was dead quiet up here, just the darkness and the wind whistling through the monument.

“You did a fine job,” Robert said slowly. “But we don’t like being kept out of the loop like that.”

Tim sat crushed between them, keeping his unease from showing, deciding whose throat he’d throw an elbow into first if the situation got ugly, which it looked like it might.

Robert tossed the phone book into Mitchell’s lap. “Show our friend your trick.” He nodded at Tim. “You’ll like this. Come on, Mitch. Let’s see it.”

A faint scowl etched Mitchell’s face. He picked up the phone book and balanced it on the points of his upturned fingers, a magician’s show of its three inches of thickness. Then he gripped it along the cut side in both hands, his thumbs a few inches apart. He flexed, and the book buckled. His arms began to shake. Veins stood out on his neck. His eight knuckles went white. A split snaked through the cover, a thin white river on a yellow sea. His lip was curled, a fringe of flesh and mustache, his teeth exposed like a snarling dog’s. His breath came harder. The muscles popped up on his forearms, distinct and stone-hard, peaks on mirrored mountain ranges. His entire torso was quaking.

A sound escaped Mitchell-deeper than a cry, more controlled than a grunt-and the book gave with a pleasing whoosh, ripping apart, the rent edges layered with brief ledges of page like compressed sandstone in a cliff wall. He tossed the two chunks of phone book on the dash, red draining from his face, and took the sweat off his forehead with a wipe of his T-shirt. He and Robert glanced at Tim from either side with a certain schoolyard smugness.

Mitchell kneaded one forearm, then the other. Lightly freckled and covered with blond hair, they were nearly as thick as Tim’s biceps.

“Whatever blows your dresses up, ladies.” Tim’s shirt was sweat-pasted to his lower back, but he kept his voice casual and unimpressed. “Now that the arts and crafts are over, what do you say we have that drink and call it a night?”

After a tense pause, Mitchell smiled, and Robert followed his lead. They climbed out, the truck creaking with relief, and stood on the hilltop. Industrial-tire imprints crushed the dirt into patterns. The ground up here was malleable, the dirt auburn red, like finely milled clay. A scattering of sawhorses and pallets broke up the head-high piles of metal sheets. Thick plastic drop cloths snapped in the breeze.

Nyaze Ghartey’s concept-a metallic tree, each branch representing a child killed, the crown outstretched protectively like an umbrella-had seemed to Tim pompous and distastefully abstract, but he had to admit now that there was a certain resonance to the sculpture. The framework of the piece was largely complete, though the metal planes had fleshed out only about two-thirds of it. Wood scaffolding covered the structure from top to bottom; the design itself emerged, organic and mysterious, a darker self lurking within the ordered rectangles. The leaves, metal and Bernini-thin, seemed mid-flutter on the branches.