"I thought those a.s.sholes only did b.u.t.ton jobs and disposals for us," Rosh said.

Stein shut the cruiser off. "I guess we"re not their only business. That"s the American way, right? Isn"t that what you"re always talking about?" Stein grinned over. "Free enterprise?"

"Shut up..."

The cops walked over and looked down. The two ragtag rednecks continued to dig.

"Who the h.e.l.l else is hiring you?" Rosh asked.

"No one," D-Man huffed. "Just you."

"Then who the f.u.c.k are you burying?"

Nutjob sn.i.g.g.e.red as he hoisted up another shovelful of earth. "We ain"t buryin", Captain. We"re diggin" up."

Now they"d managed to expose the top of a makeshift coffin a foot below the surface. Nutjob stepped down into the hole, and with a hammer claw began to pry off the lid.

D-Man forearmed sweat off his brow.

"Holy s.h.i.t, she stinks!" Nutjob yelled after fully opening the lid. He jumped back out and fanned his face.

"You expect her to smell like English Leather, dimwit?" D-Man said. "She"s been dead in the ground a day."

Rosh and Stein stared down in disbelief. The wan lantern light revealed the nude corpse within the box: a pallid yet shapely dead woman in her twenties. Pert-breasted, auburn-haired.

"Carrie Whittaker." Stein"s voice ground like sandpaper. "Aka Lazy," Rosh finished. His gaze spun to D-Man. "What the f.u.c.k"s going on? We paid you to bury this b.i.t.c.h."

"Yeah. And we buried her," D-Man said, and swigged a can of beer. "And now we done dug her up. But don"t worry, we"re gonna bury her again." He flicked a finger at Nutjob, a signal.

"s.h.i.t," the other lout complained. Then he held his nose and got back in the hole.

Rosh could only stare stupefied. He"d only now noticed that something had been buried with the corpse: a towel-wrapped bundle. Nutjob hacked at the smell, removed the bundle, put back the lid, then jumped back out.

And next?

He and D-Man began to fill the hole back in.

Stein continued to stare while Rosh leaned over the bundle and, using thumb and forefinger as tweezers, unwrapped it to reveal- "Three loaves of pumpernickel," Stein observed.

Rosh straightened up, rubbed his temples. He looked back at the two grave diggers, sighed, and said, "Sergeant Stein?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Is it me, or is this the most f.u.c.ked-up thing we"ve ever seen?"

"It is, sir, the most f.u.c.ked-up thing we"ve ever seen..."

D-Man and Nutjob chuckled and kept shoveling the dirt in. When they were finished they wiped off their hands and stamped the dirt down.

"D-Man?" the captain queried next. He tried to regulate his tone of voice. "Why did you. Just dig up. The girl we paid you. To bury yesterday?"

"To get the bread out," the brawny man answered. "We put it there yesterday before we buried her. But now we need it."

Rosh rubbed his face and sighed again. "D-Man? Why. Do you. Need f.u.c.king pumpernickel. From a f.u.c.kING COFFIN WITH A DEAD CRACKHEAD IN IT?!"

"Best not to ask," D-Man said and swigged more beer. "We don"t really even know ourselves. We do what our boss tells us... just like you."

Spittle flew from Rosh"s lips when he yelled. "I want to know why you buried that girl with three loaves of bread and then dug her back up!"

The rocketing exclamation caused several night birds to flutter out of the trees behind them.

"Calm down, man. I told ya. It"s best not to ask." "Yeah, Captain," Nutjob augmented. "Ain"t ya ever heard the saying *Curiosity killed the clown"?"

D-Man gaped. "It"s cat, d.i.c.kbrain! Cat!"

"Oh."

D-Man bare-handed the beer can to a ball of aluminum. "It"s just some jive, Captain. We don"t ask why, ain"t no reason to. They"re into some weird s.h.i.t is all."

"Weird s.h.i.t? Yeah, I"ll say!" Rosh yelled, pointing to the bread.

"It"s just superst.i.tious stuff, you know, from Europe or some s.h.i.t. Good luck or somethin"." D-Man worked a kink out of his back and cracked it like a walnut. "Oh, yeah, what I needed to tell ya is the next switch-off"ll be two days late."

"Bulls.h.i.t!" Rosh yelled. Between the exhumation, the bread, and now this bit of news, Rosh felt on the verge of a conniption. "I got bagmen and point guys wanting to give me money every f.u.c.king day! They can"t sell enough of the s.h.i.t! It"s business, D-Man! I told "em day after tomorrow so it"s gotta BE day after tomorrow!"

D-Man looked annoyed by the outburst. "Relax! It"s gonna be late. You don"t like it"-D-Man handed Rosh his TracPhone-"call up your own self and say so...which you won"t do "cos he"s the guy who bankrolled the whole operation and got you started."

Rosh looked at the phone, then gave it back. "All right. Two days late. f.u.c.k! Any idea why?"

"No." D-Man stomped dirt off his soles. "We do what we"re told, Captain. Me, you. "Cos it"s the boss who"s paddin" our wallets."

"He"s right, Captain," Stein said. "Can"t fight the system. So what? Let the crackheads go into withdrawal a few days. It"ll keep them humble."

Rosh finally simmered down. "Yeah, okay. You"re right." When Nutjob was scratching dandruff out of his goatee, D-Man put the shovels in the van, and then tossed in the loaves of bread. "We"re done here. What was it you wanted to tell us?"

The sound of crickets began to rise with the moon. Rosh handed D-Man a photo of Jary "Kapp" Robinson. "This is the brother of one of the dudes you waxed the other night on Pine Drive-Jary Kapp."

D-Man nodded at the picture. "No problem. Same deal, five grand and it"s done. Just tell us where to find him."

Stein"s glance to Rosh looked less than hopeful. "We don"t know where he is, he"s laying low."

"And we figure you must have plenty of stoolies on the street, just like we do," Rosh added. "Ours either aren"t talking or don"t know."

Nutjob was inspecting his finger after picking his nose. D-Man opened another beer. "We don"t have people on the street, man. We"re just deliverymen. You"re the ones with the in for mants."

Rosh"s lips pursed in frustration. "I don"t want this guy b.u.t.toned, I want him alive."

"And you don"t know where he is so you can"t give us a loke," D-Man finally deduced.

"Yeah. So I guess ya can"t do it, huh?"

D-Man and Nutjob traded a silent glance.

"What?" Rosh said. "What"s that-that, you know? That look? Stein, what would you call that?"

"I don"t know, Captain. I guess it would be a sinister look." D-Man whipped his phone back out. "Gimme a minute, I"ll see what I can do." And then he walked out of earshot.

Nutjob said nothing. He turned off the lantern and stowed it in the back of the van. Rosh and Stein followed him.

"Nutjob, what gives?" Stein asked. "You either got informants on the street or you don"t."

"We don"t, man. But...there might be another way. We done it before. Best to not ask details."

More f.u.c.ked-up stuff, Rosh thought, aggravated. Yeah, curiosity kills the clown. If there was one thing he had a lot of, it was curiosity.

D-Man came over, frowning when he noticed Nutjob huffing more pot. "About that job you want? Boss says we can do it. But it"s ten grand, not five. You want the dude alive, it"s riskier."

No point bellyaching, Rosh realized. "Okay, but how are you gonna do it if you don"t know where Jary is?"

"That"s the hitch. We can do it, but we gotta have something that belongs to the dude," D-Man told him. "A watch, a shirt, a shoe-"

Rosh nearly snapped. "Or, let me guess! A piece of hair or a fingernail?"

"Either of those"ll do-"

"Oh, man, come on! Is that what this is? Voodoo or some s.h.i.t like that?"

D-Man hesitated. "Yeah, I guess. Sort of. You want the job done, that"s what we need. Why you gotta b.i.t.c.h about everything?"

Now Rosh was a mess. "Great. That"s just great. And even if I believed in bulls.h.i.t like that-which I don"t-s.h.i.t, we don"t have anything of his-"

"Yeah, we do, Captain." It was Stein, coming back from the cruiser. "Will this work?" He gave D-Man the Red Sox hat.

"Good thinking!" Rosh said.

"If it"s the dude"s, then it"ll be fine," D-Man said. "And the ten grand? It"s up front."

Rosh frowned at him. "You think I carry that kind of cash around in my pocket?"

"Yeah."

Rosh gave him a band of hundred-dollar bills.

"Solid," D-Man said. "We"ll call ya when we got the guy."

Rosh was waylaid. "Just like that? You"re s.h.i.tting me. Because of a f.u.c.king hat?"

"Yeah," D-Man said, and then he and Nutjob got in the van and drove off.

Rosh and Stein traded glances, in a look that was not sinister but very nearly fearful.

IV.

"Well, I"d say our first excursion to Lowensport and Somner"s Cove was a success," Seth remarked when he pulled the Tahoe into the front drive. The cloudless sky full of moonlight cut their house into a crisp silhouette.

"Two completely different places," Judy said, "but both unique in their own way. And those steamed crabs in Somner"s Cove were delicious."

"Crazy Alan"s Crab house." Seth chuckled. "I wonder if there really is a guy named Crazy Alan..." Seth put his arm around her, and went in the house. They"d had a ma.s.sive crab dinner in Somner"s Cove, then killed some time driving through town and along the bayfront roads, some still paved with oyster sh.e.l.ls like so many roads in the area. It had been stunning scenery when the sun had set. When they"d headed back, though, Seth forgot which road he needed, and they wound up having to drive through a surprisingly large slum that seemed pushed aside from the town"s better environs. I guess every place has its underbelly, Seth reasoned. Judy had remained silent: young men who could only be drug dealers dawdled on every corner. She could do without reminders like this, he thought, and, next, around another corner, a drunk stumbled out of a ramshackle saloon and collapsed on the sidewalk. And I guess I could do without that... Seth drove out as fast as he could.

Judy"s demeanor changed the instant they returned to the house. Seth hoped she felt as revived as he did. Their talk with Asher Lowen had left them both br.i.m.m.i.n.g with...something. "The effect of confession," Judy had commented later. "Because that"s what we did, we confessed to him."

"Not quite but, yeah, I do feel a whole lot better now, better than I have in a long time," Seth had replied. He hadn"t mentioned his drunk driving charge, though, where he"d crossed the center line and crashed into a guardrail, missing a minivan full of children by less than a yard. "I just didn"t have it in me to tell him about my crash."

"And I wasn"t too hip to the idea of telling him just how low drugs took me in the end."

Seth nodded. "It wouldn"t have mattered, though-I"m sure of it. We could"ve told him all of that, and he"d still understand."

Back inside, Seth instinctively went to his office to check email, but before he knew it Judy came right up behind him and ran her hands up inside his shirt. "Oh, so you"re putting the make on me?" he joked.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Got a problem with that?" "Not in the least..."

"Why don"t you check my emails, too," she said against his neck, "while I check..." Now her hand slipped lower, fingers teasing into his pants.

Just the sensation of her hands made Seth reel in arousal. He logged on to her account, thought, To h.e.l.l with email, and turned around to find her already stripped down to pan ties and bra. "This has just got to go," he muttered, about to unfasten her bra, when- "Oh, look," she said, viewing the screen over his shoulder. "I"ve got one. Let me check it real quick." She nudged around him to lean over the keyboard.

Seth could"ve howled. "You really love teasing me, don"t you?"

"It"s not teasing, it"s stoking," she laughed. "I"m stoking you up."

He was about to make some brazen comment but his voice fell short when the image of her hit him full-force: barely dressed, l.u.s.trous skin glowing, bent over the keyboard. Seth couldn"t help it; he went right up behind her, rubbed his groin against her rump, and slid his hands around to shuck her b.r.e.a.s.t.s right out of the bra. She tensed, inhaled through her teeth when his fingers went to the nipples. "Can"t you wait? I"ve got an email-"

"The email can wait, but I"ve got something that can"t," he told her. He could feel her nipples swell between his fingers. "Besides, you started it..."

Judy giggled, hitting the print b.u.t.ton, then she turned around and sat right up on the desk. Seth grew weak-kneed at this new, sultrier image: Judy sitting there with her thighs parted, the bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s inflamed. "We can do it now." She giggled some more. "Or..."

"Or, what?"

"Or we can check the translation!" she exclaimed and hopped off the desk. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swayed when she scurried to the printer.

"Translation?" Seth said through a smirk. Does she do this on purpose, or is she just scatterbrained?

"From my friend Wanda," she reminded. "She translated the Aramaic prayer we found in the mezuzah."

Oh...that, Seth thought as his arousal foundered.

She excitedly retrieved the paper and read it under the lamp. Suddenly her enthusiasm seemed to degrade in notches, replaced either by confusion or solemnity.

"Not quite what I expected," she muttered. "I thought it would be some sort of baruch-"