He flails about with a hand, trying to get her to help him up.

“No,” she says. And swats the hand away.

She’s patient. She waits for him to finally gasp air back into his chest and sit up. Butt in the grass, he looks up at her with pathetic hangdog eyes. “You pushed me off my damn roof.”

“That was an accident.”

“You didn’t mean to shove me?”

“I meant to shove you, just not off the roof.”

He laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “You’re lucky I’m not dead.”

“I’d say that makes you the lucky one.”

“Yeah. Good point. Listen, I don’t do the dog thing anymore. That’s something I did as a kid. And even then it wasn’t that I wanted to do it. It was . . .” He rubs his eyes, groans. “Life is better now, is all I’m saying.”

“But you know people.”

“I didn’t fight dogs around here.”

She says it again. “But you know people.”

“Of course I know people. Dogfights are like . . . they’re like the oases you see on nature shows where all the animals come from hundreds of miles around to hang out at this one watering hole. At the fights, you find, like, drugs and gangs and guns. Hookers. All kinds of shit.”

Atlanta’s suddenly not sure she can trust him. Guy’s part of that. He’s not her people—he’s one of the beasts at the watering hole. Before she thought of him as a friend; now she’s a bit wifty on that point.

Still. What choice does she have?

“I’m looking for some people. Used a friend’s terrier as a bait dog.”

“Oof.” He shakes his head. That means he gets it. He knows what that terrier went through.

“And I need to get some payback for her.” And for that poor dang dog.

“I dunno, Atlanta. That’s tough, but . . .”

She folds her arms in front of her chest. “You’re gonna help me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because next time I’ll do worse than just push you off a roof.” She grabs at her crotch, then says: “Remember the thing with my mother’s boyfriend.” She turns her hand into a gun, lets the thumb hammer fall. “Boom.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, his deep tan going suddenly pale. “Awright. Help me up. Let’s go inside. I need some ice.”

He doesn’t have any ice, so he holds a tallboy of beer against the back of his neck. “I think I got, like, a slipped cervical disc.”

“I didn’t think you had a cervix.”

“Not a cervix, a—you know what, never mind. You don’t know what you’re asking me to do with this dogfight thing,” Guy says. He cranes his neck left, then right. Vertebrae snap, crackle, pop. “Ow.”

“I’m just looking for two particular dickheads. Bodie and Bird Haycock.”