Angie kept going and a half mile down the road, we U-turned and went back. The parking lot belonged to a bar. Just like Wickham, you wouldn’t have known what it was without the small neon Miller High Life signs in the windows. It was a low two-story building, a little deeper than most of the houses, stretching back an extra ten yards or so. From inside I could hear glasses clinking, a smattering of laughter, the babble of voices, and a Bon Jovi song coming off the jukebox. I amended that last thought; maybe it was just a stereo tuned to a radio station and no one inside had actually paid money to listen to Bon Jovi. Then I looked at the pickups and the bar again, and I wasn’t hopeful.

Angie said, “We going to wait here too?”

“Nope. Going in.”

“Goody.” She looked at the building. “Thank God I’m licensed to carry a firearm.” She checked the load in her .38.

“Damn straight,” I said, climbing out of the car. “First thing you do when we get inside, shoot the stereo.”

***

Simone was nowhere in sight when we entered. This was pretty easy to ascertain, because the moment we stepped through the door, everyone stopped moving.

I was wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and a baseball cap. My face looked like I’d had a disagreement with a pit bull, and the jacket that covered my gun was a raggy, faded army thing. I fit right in.

Angie was wearing a dark blue football jacket with white leather sleeves over a loose white cotton shirt that hung untucked over a pair of black leggings.

Guess which one of us they were looking at.

I looked at Angie. New Bedford isn’t terribly far from here. Big Dan’s Bar is in New Bedford. That’s where a bunch of guys threw a girl down on a pool table and had their version of fun at her expense while the rest of the bar cheered them on. I looked at the patrons of this bar a Heinz 57 mix of eastern rednecks, white trash, mill workers only recently immigrated from the Third World, Portuguese, a couple of black guys all poor and hostile and gearing up to let off some steam. Probably came here because Big Dan’s was closed. I looked at Angie again. I wasn’t worried about her; I was considering what would happen to my business if my partner shot the dicks off a barful of people in Lansington. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think we’d be able to keep that office in the church.

The barroom was larger than it looked from the outside. To my left, just before the bar itself, was a narrow staircase of unfinished wood. The bar ran halfway down the floor on the left side. Across from it were a few tables for two against a dark plywood wall. Past the bar, the place opened up and I could see pinball and video machines on the left and the corner of a pool table on the right. A pool table. Terrific.