“I love how you’re trying new things with your hair.” 

Tilda had warned her, so Selena Marti had her lines ready, groggy or not. 

“Thanks, Ma, it’s a work in progress.” 

They’d moved her back to the clinic at the Bedford Hills facility, which was further out than White Plains, but the jeep made the travel time about the same. She didn’t look anywhere near a hundred percent (it was brain surgery), but a lot better than two days ago. 

“I brought these,” Weecho said, holding out some flowers Dara had grabbed out of one of Alexey’s vases. Jeremy had added a bow. 

“They’re nice,” Selena said, knowing there was usually some story behind anything he brought like that. “Leave them on the table. One of the girls will put them in water.” 

Weecho pulled a chair up next to the bed. Took her hand, put it to his cheek. 

She nudged her boy. “You’ve got problems, right?”  

Weecho nodded. Kissed her hand. Filled her in. 

                                                #          #          # 

After he’d finished, Selena thought a while. Weecho had told her pretty much everything, leaving out the part about getting shot (which reminded him, he hadn’t gone to that doctor, had better change that dressing). He’d ended with how they made the decoy DVD at Alexey’s, which he’d stuck a copy of in his jacket pocket. 

“Decoy…” she said. 

He hadn’t been conscious of calling it that. 

“You want to draw him out,” Selena said, “away from the girl.” 

“Juna. How do I do that?” 

“I don’t think you should do anything.” 

“Ma…” 

“Get somebody who’s trained.” 

She was sounding like a mother again now. Not what he’d come for. 

“How should I tell somebody who’s trained to do it?” 

Nice try, but unh-uh. 

“Don’t go getting clever with me,” she said. 

“Ma, I have to do this.” 

They gave each other that long look they always did when it got like this. 

Then a voice broke in. “Excuse me…” 

They looked up. A black girl with blonde hair almost like Weecho’s, a nurses’ aide, was standing there with a blood pressure kit.   

“It’s time for this,” the girl said. 

“Can you give us two minutes?” Selena said. 

The girl looked at Weecho, visitor with punkadelic copycat hair. 

“I’m family,” he said. 

“Whatever,” the girl said, and went back out. 

Weecho picked up a water glass with a bendable straw and held it for his mother. 

“Where were we?” she said. 

“Somebody told me once, if something scares you, go for it.” 

“Was that somebody you respected?” 

“For that I did.” 

She knew who he meant. 

He put the glass down, picked at some blanket fuzz while his mother thought. 

After a minute she said, “Go back to what got you into this in the first place.” 

“The crash?” 

“The woman.” 

“Nina.” 

“Try to pick up her vibes.” 

“Where?” he asked. 

“Wherever they’d be strongest. She’ll speak to you from there.” 

                                                #          #          # 

He parked the jeep on a side street a couple of blocks from Nina’s bungalow. It hadn’t taken as long as he thought it would driving down from Bedford Hills, cutting across Long Island like that and bypassing the city. But still, by the time he got here it was late in the day. 

He walked to the dirt road that ran along the channel the bungalow was on, looked across and saw a cop car jouncing along on the other side. After the Petoria fire, they’d be checking out anybody they didn’t know, and Weecho knew he was a slam-dunk if they caught him. Besides, they probably had his picture from the opium alert, though his hair was different now. He ducked behind some bushes until the cops drove off. 

He waited a minute to make sure it was clear, went quick to the plank walkway and out to the bungalow. Tried the door before doing any climbing, got a surprise when he found it unlocked. Then remembered he could have left it that way when he came back out for the puppy.  

Or Lynch left it that way when he came by and took Juna. Could still be in there, for all he knew.   

Weecho bent down to look under the house, through the stilts to see if Lynch’s boat was tied up at the floating dock. There wasn’t any Donzi, but he could see another boat, an old fishing skiff. 

His first thought was prowler, but what was he going to do, call the cops? And he didn’t have the pistol anymore since Gatchel’s guy Sunglasses had kept it.      

He nudged the door open a tiny bit and put his ear to the crack. Couldn’t hear any sounds from inside, but anyone in there would have heard him coming and kept still. He ducked into a crouch, went in and eased the door shut behind him.   

The place was a shambles. 

He stayed low and crept into the living room. The sofa was thrashed apart, books dumped all over the floor. Things from the kitchen were strewn all over the dining space. It was more like vandals had been here than a prowler.         

But of course it would have been Lynch, who’d figured the same thing Weecho did – that Juna had hidden the key when she saw him coming, and he’d torn the place apart to find it. Carrying on, doing his intimidation thing to put some scare into her, get her to give up the key. 

And Juna knowing that keeping the key and the DVD from him was the only thing keeping her alive.    

Weecho picked up a long knife from the kitchen, better as a weapon than the folding one he had in his pocket. Went back into the living room and kept looking around – eye out for an intruder and for some sign from Juna. He spotted a red light blinking next to the fish tank, an old telephone answering machine he and Juna had checked out on their first visit. The blinking drew him over and he pressed the Play button. Heard a hissing sound – then Lynch’s voice: 

“Hello, there, I thought you’d be back (Lynch getting into Weecho’s head right off). The young lady is well, as you can hear for yourself.” 

Juna yelled: “Weecho, be careful, he’s…” 

There were muffled thumps, then Lynch again: 

“I hope we can wrap our business up quickly. No one should have to suffer any more for this, no reason we can’t bring it all to a successful conclusion. You get yourself ready with the item we want and I’ll be in touch. Your friend gave me your number.” 

Weecho was reaching for the Replaybutton when Lynch came back on: 

“One other thing. In the top drawer under this machine is something you should see.” 

There was a click and a beep as the machine reset. It was sitting on a chest of drawers. Weecho reached for the top drawer… stopped when something flashed in his head – an image of a hand, a severed hand, that Arab girl’s who Dara said had been Alexey’s spy and lover. 

He shook off the image and started opening the drawer, checking for wires, pulling it slow and careful. The light was bad, he bent down to see inside. 

What he saw was pure Lynch.    

A dead puppy. 

At first he thought it was Jasper, but that couldn’t be. It was a Rottweiler, but Weecho could see when he lifted out the little body and laid it on the dining table that it was one of Jasper’s sisters. Her head hung loose, had been twisted around. She’d probably gotten separated from the others like Jasper had, and had run up to Juna when she’d walked to the bungalow from the train. And then Lynch had come and broken the little thing’s neck, probably when it barked at him.  

“Not a nice guy,” a voice behind Weecho said. 

Weecho whirled around and flashed the knife. A weather-beaten man in camouflage stepped out from the shadows. 

The poacher, Teddy Shongut. 

“But you knew that,” Shongut said. 

Whoever Weecho might have expected, it wasn’t him. 

“What are you doing here?” Weecho said. 

“I might ask you the same thing.” 

“I’m asking first.” Weecho waggling the knife.  

Shongut watched him, glancing at the crazy hair, not even looking at the knife. “If you wanna know, there was a death in the family.” 

“What death?” 

“Nina Galleon. She was my daughter.” 

 Daughter? Nina? Weecho stood there like he’d been stun-gunned. She’ll speak to you from there, his mother had said. Weecho thought she’d meant Nina’s ghost. 

Shongut tilted his head toward the fish tank. “I come by to feed them and found all this mess.” 

“But… I mean… How could you be her father?” 

“The usual way,” he said. “But if you mean what were the circumstances, I crewed on her mother’s trawler, back when. Nina kept her mother’s name, part of it. Gallioni. Marge Gallioni. She checked out a few years back. They found her boat burning off Sandy Hook one morning. She floated up a couple days later, shot.” 

“This is unreal.” 

“Not if you live out here it ain’t.” 

The scene under the BQE came flashing back – the burning car, trying to pull Nina out… Weecho wanting and not wanting to tell Shongut about it, that he’d been with this man’s daughter when she got incinerated. 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” 

“Thank you,” Shongut said. “Now what the hell are you doing here?” 

Weecho nodded toward the answering machine. “You heard Lynch. He’s holding Juna. You remember her?” 

“The kid with the hood.” 

“We’ve got something he wants, which turned out to be hot. Some other people are after it too.” 

“What is it, this hot thing?” 

“Long story, but basically it’s to do with blackmail.” 

“That doesn’t surprise me, it being you.” 

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t…” 

Shongut held up his hand, frowning. “You expecting somebody?” 

“No.” 

Shongut stepped through the rubble to the front door and looked out the peephole. 

“You know these guys?” Shongut motioning Weecho over. 

Weecho looked out. A dark sedan had pulled up to the end of the plank walkway. Senator Gatchel’s man, Sunglasses, got out with two other suits. Whatever they were doing here, it couldn’t be good.  Frisking him would turn up that decoy DVD in his pocket. 

“Those are the other people that’re after the thing,” he said to Shongut. 

“And you, by the look of it.” 

“Probably.” 

Weecho knew Shongut didn’t have good feelings toward him, hoped he liked suits even less.  

Shongut said, “My boat’s downstairs.” 

“Let’s go.”  

Weecho locked the front door and they turned for the sliding glass door to the deck. On the way, he popped out the answering machine cassette. 

“They don’t need to hear this.” 

He shoved the cassette into his pocket and followed Shongut outside and across the deck, staying low, keeping the house between them and the suits out front. Weecho could hear them starting to bang on the door. 

He and Shongut scrambled down the ramp under the deck, jumped aboard the old fishing skiff tied to the pilings. 

“Get in the fish box,” Shongut said. 

“Hold on a sec.” 

The Jet Ski was tied up in front of the skiff. Weecho could see the key in the ignition where he’d left it, didn’t want Sunglasses getting ideas. Hopped back out, went over and pulled the key out, yanked it off the ducky-float keychain and flung it into the channel. 

“What if I wanna drive it?” Shongut said. 

“Hotwire it.” 

Weecho jumped back onto the skiff and squeezed himself into the empty fish box. Shongut flipped the lid shut, but Weecho eased it back open a crack so he could see what was going on, maybe let some of the fish smell out. Shongut slipped the lines off the pilings and pushed the skiff out into the channel. 

They drifted away from the bungalow, Weecho hearing the oversize outboard rumble when Shongut pressed the starter. The poacher pointed the bow down the channel and headed without any hurry toward open water.  

Peering out of the fish box, back across the water to the bungalow deck, Weecho could see Sunglasses come out and stare in their direction. He and his pals must’ve kicked in the door.