Keegan rubbed the dome of her skull through her dense, curly fur. “Don’t worry about him,” he said to the dog. “He’s just flexing his muscles. You and I are going to be okay.”

THERE WERE MORE cars in the pier’s parking lot than Keegan would have expected so close to midnight. He drove past a row of old pickups and a couple of beat-up sedans, all parked close to the pier, all facing the ocean.

He coasted down to the farthest corner of the lot, away from the boardwalk streetlamps where it would be dark. He pulled in, facing away from the shoreline, and cut the engine. He looked along the shore in both directions and in the rearview mirror, where the choppy sea glimmered out on the horizon. Satisfied that no one was watching, he reached between his feet, under the driver’s seat, and pulled out the bundle he’d stowed there. It was heavy and padded, the old revolver wrapped in a shoe rag and stuffed in a liquor store bag. He’d sealed the brown-paper bag with about a yard of cellophane tape strips, clipped from the dispenser in his mother’s kitchen drawer.

Out the passenger window, the line of parked cars were all rimmed in moonlight. So many cars. At least a dozen. Keegan hadn’t made provision in his plan for witnesses. He hadn’t even bothered to bring a jacket so he could hide the bundle he’d be carrying. He got out of the car, tucked the package into his waistband and tugged his shirt down over it. The bulge was absurd, but what could he do? He walked along the darker side of the parking lot towards the pier. The waxing moon was nearly full, but it was low over the water. It lit up the gray pylons and glinted off the lines of distant swells.

Evenly spaced lamps lined both sides of the pier, so Keegan walked straight down the center, tugging down his shirttails when they rode up.

Up ahead, just beyond the breakers, a small cluster of men tended a row of fishing rods that leaned against the rails on either side. The men were sunk in folding chairs and bundled in blankets, despite the balmy night air. A transistor radio was tuned to a Spanish-language station. On it, a man crooned, something about blossoms and a garden and first kisses. Keegan’s Spanish from college was rusty at best.

Aquella tarde probé, de las cerezas la miel

En la quietud del jardín, de los cerezos en flor…

Keegan didn’t look at the men as he walked past. He stared down at the splintering planks at his feet and the scuffed nailheads glinting in the lamplight. His breathing was slow and conscious. Out here on the pier, the ocean breeze was colder than he’d bargained for, and it rippled in the folds of his sweat-dampened shirt. The bulge of the gun would have been obvious if anyone looked in his direction, but soon he was beyond the fishermen and breathing easier, the dark end of the pier up ahead of him, the Mambo King music growing tinny at his back.