I looked back. Through the diner window, I could see the waitress holding her sponge real tight up near her neck and frowning down beside our table. The drivers were going up to the counter now, glancing at her, snickering. One shook his head.

“People are funny.” Hogg gave my shoulder a push forward. “We could come back here tomorrow, you and me, in a couple of different shirts, maybe some clean pants, the both of us, actin’ halfway proper, and people would look at us. But that’s all. And maybe after we got our food, somebody would come over and say, ‘Excuse me. But you weren’t in here yesterday, were you …?’ And I’d look at ’em and say, with a big grin, ‘Whatcha mean? I was haulin’ crates of peaches yesterday down near Chattahootchee.’ And they’d go away just as happy. ’Cause people don’t even wanna see shit like that. I mean, they’d be happier pretending it didn’t even happen. But you’re gonna see enough of the kind of stuff I usually do. Get in, boy!” Hogg reached up and pulled the handle down on the cab door; it swung open. “Get on in.” He went around to the other side. “Let’s get out of here while it’s still fun. Bastard’s trying to phone the cops now.…”

At the wall phone, the cashier was dialing with one hand and clutching the receiver and his broken glasses with the other.

One of the drivers motioned the others; they started for the door. They were using the confusion to leave without paying.

The Frontwater industrial section we drove through was deserted.

Hogg wheeled into an alley, pulled up beside a rank of dented garbage cans, and we got out. The sky was violet and copper between buildings that looked like the rotten teeth in the side of Hogg’s jaw.

Above the door across the dirty brick was a sign in which I made out a P, an I, and a T; but there were more letters in it. Behind the window, the gray glass tubing of a neon sign (off) snaked through the letters of some beer brand.

It was the back entrance to a bar, and it looked awfully still.

“In here.” Hogg pushed at the door. The second time he shoved, it opened.

We entered on a cracked concrete floor. A man with short gray hair and a stained apron was dragging a cardboard carton from the top of a pile of cartons. It clanked down against his belly like beer cans.

“Hello, Ray,” Hogg said.

“Well, hey there!” Ray hefted up the carton a little higher. “How you keepin’ yourself, Hogg? Ain’t seen you around for goin’ on a few days, now.”

“Keepin’ pretty good. Can’t complain.” Hogg rubbed at his pockets and more or less ignored the way Ray glanced at me, at Hogg’s bare foot. “Hey, Ray, would you look in the front for me? If Nigg and Dago are there—and they ain’t too drunk—send ’em on back here. I wanna talk to them in private.”