From the dark corners of the shed, the Compton twins materialized, holding the two remaining Jersey boys in their gun sights. The jaws of the Jersey boys dropped. Fin and Fergie stopped in front of the two Jersey boys and held out their large hands. Without a word, the punks handed the twins their guns. Then the twins stood over the dead punk and fired them into the remains of the fallen man until the clips were nearly empty.

“There ya go,” the Compton twins said, handing the guns back to their owners.

The Jersey boy to the left began weeping. Then he peed his pants.

The Compton twins followed Duke out. Fin or Fergie—who the hell knows?—stopped behind me and said in a mountain-troll rumble, “I’da paid to see them punks cap you, Snow.”

“And I’d pay to see you drop twenty pounds, ya chicken-’n’-biscuit-eatin’ bitch,” I said, not in the mood for sass from Sasquatch.

Duke and his crew faded into a bitter cold Michigan night.

“Now,” I began, still training my Glock on Low Rider and Pee Pants, “tell me who hired you to off me, and maybe I’ll let you scurry back to your hidey-holes unharmed.”

“You tell him and we both eat a bullet!” Pee Pants said before wiping his snot-glazed lips and chin.

“Since when we run scared of some Chinese Bruce Lee wannabe? I ain’t a-scared of that mothafucka!”

“Chinese?” I said. “Not a white guy named Sloane?”

Silence.

Pee Pants, in full emotional-breakdown mode, said, “I never wanted any of this shit! I wanted to go to art school, goddammit!”

He suddenly made a run for an exit door. I let him go. The door clunked open, and Pee Pants sprinted out into the cold. Then it was just Low Rider and me.

“If it ain’t us, it’ll be somebody else,” Low Rider said defiantly.

“Always is,” I said. Then I gave the bridge of his nose a crack from the butt of my Glock and brought him to his knees. I walked behind him and pressed the barrel of my gun to the back of his head. “Tell me who this Chinese gentleman is.”

“He’ll kill me if you don’t,” Low Rider said.

“Then you got nothing left to lose.”

Low Rider finally capitulated, telling me everything he knew about the Chinese man: young, lean, fairly tall, nice suits. Knew him as Mr. Xiang. Xiang had used the trio three times before in the killing of a female real estate agent in Brooklyn, a male real estate developer in Jersey City and a male real estate agent on Cape Cod.

“I don’t think he’s no boss or nothin’,” Low Rider said. “Delivery boy be my guess.”

“Why do you say that?”