“What the fuck’s going on?” he said, running his hand over his shaved head. He looked nervous. “You told, didn’t you?” he said, looking at me. “You told the cops about my business. How long before they get here?”

“I didn’t do anything like that,” I said.

“Did you tell that wife of yours? Did she call them?”

“That would be Sarah,” I said. “And no. I didn’t tell her. I’m here to ask a favor.”

Earl squinted. “A favor?”

“I need a gun,” I said. “I want to borrow your gun.”

“Forget it.”

“Earl, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. There are people looking for me tonight, and until I sort a few things out, I need some protection.”

Earl glowered at me. “You ever owned a gun?”

“No.”

“You ever fired a gun?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Zack, you ever even held a gun?”

I tried to think. Did toy guns count? And what about the G.I. Joe figures and accessories I’d had as a kid? Did that count for something?

“I guess, technically, no. All my shooting has been with a camera.”

“And what the hell do you need a gun for anyway? How many enemies does a guy make writing space stories?”

“Come on, Earl. Don’t you owe me one? Did I make a call to Detective Flint after I left here the other day?”

Earl shook his head. “Look, I appreciate that. But what you’re asking, I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re going to have to explain,” Trixie said.

And so I started in all over again, for the second time in the last hour and a half, although I gave him the Reader’s Digest version. For example, I didn’t tell him about trying to instruct Sarah in the fine points of purse safety. I said I’d found a purse.

“So I wanted to return it, and check the driver’s license, and it was a woman named Stefanie Knight, who works over at Valley Forest Estates.”

Earl turned away, shaking his head, and reached for a beer from the fridge.

“So I was trying to track her down, and left my name and e-mail address at her mother’s place, and then this psycho named Rick comes looking for me, wanting what’s in this purse, which at first I thought was all this money, but that turned out to be counterfeit, and then I figured it was this film—”

“Film?”

“A roll of film. Of Stefanie Knight and this councilman in the sack.”

“What councilman?”

I told him. “But it turns out Rick and his boss, Greenway, wanted something more than just the film, they were after this ledger.” I indicated it, on the table, as if I was pointing to Exhibit #1.

“So they’re after you for this ledger?”

“Yeah, that, and I sort of pissed off Rick, hitting him in the head.”