A reporter was interviewing a white woman with silver hair in the Chicago airport. “This can’t be good for Margaret,” the woman was saying. “It takes attention away from her tonight.” The reporter asked a question. “Yeah,” the woman answered, “I’ve been leaning toward her—and I think most of the delegates from northern California have—but we’ll see. I doubt this accident—and I hope Nick is okay—will affect the convention.”

“So this Dunne guy,” Timmons asked, “wanted you to take what you got to this guy who busted up his car and maybe got that girl killed?”

“How we’re going to get to him now?” Willie asked.

“Okay, okay, now you all shut the fuck up,” Anjean said. “They’re coming to us.”

Next to the news anchor was a screen legend: “Mayhem at Med Center.” The show cut to footage of broken glass in the lobby of the hospital, and then to the abandoned ambulance roped off by yellow police tape. Anjean bounced on the couch: “Man, they ain’t showin’ those tires we cut. That would embarrass their asses.”

A police sketch of the “young mystery man” who visited Dunne’s room barely resembled Starrell.

“Don’t look like you, suge,” she said.

Anjean threw a cushion at him: “You the mystery man.” He laughed and slapped his knee. “A damn ugly mystery man.”

“ … Fortunately, there were no serious injuries … .” That was what Starrell had been waiting to hear. The segment ended, and commercials began.

“We should have been first,” Anjean complained.

Starrell dragged his chair next to Timmons. “Sorry, baby,” he said lowly. She ran a finger down his cheek. Anjean was about to speak, but Willie raised a fist, and Anjean closed his mouth.

“Me, too, baby,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “Was she nice?”

“I guess so. I don’t know.”

“So now you got to have a plan.”

“Sure. Like how we’re gonna get this”—he held up some of the pages—“to a guy cribbed by the police, when they want me? And even if he’s out, like I just call the White House and say we got this package for him?”

“Fuckin’ no way,” Anjean said. He leaped off the couch. “Man, we sell this shit to somebody. I didn’t save your black ass for nothing, man.”

“Who we’re going to sell it to?” Willie asked.

“Shit, I don’t know. There’s all these motherfuckers on television or at magazines that pay jumbo-size for this kind of shit.”

Starrell stood in front of Anjean. He stared hard at the man. “Ain’t happenin’ that way, Anjean.”

“Man, who says you make the call?” Anjean waved his hands. “Who the fuck found the asshole’s joint? Willie did on his computer? How much that thing cost you, bro?”

Willie didn’t reply.