“Ma’am,” he said to her. “I wonder if you could help me with a serious problem.”

She looked skeptically at him, her demeanor changing somewhat. Guys said similar words to her every night after they’d been through buckets of beer. The problem was always the same thing, and so easy to remedy if she didn’t mind slipping off behind the restaurant for maybe ten minutes and dropping her jeans.

“What.” She continued writing, ignoring the jerk.

“I need a pin,” he said.

“A what?” she looked up at him. “You mean something to write with?”

“No, ma’am. I mean a pin, a needle, and something to sterilize it with,” he told her.

“What for?” She frowned, opening her fat vinyl pocketbook.

“A splinter.”

“Oh!” Now that she understood. “Don’cha hate it when that happens? This place is full of ’em, too. Here you go, sugar.”

She fished out a small sewing kit in a clear plastic box that she’d gotten from the last hotel some rich guy took her to, and she slid out a needle. She handed him a bottle of nail polish remover. He dipped the needle in acetone and bravely retreated to the porch. Sure enough, the two thugs were prowling near cars, waiting. They lurched in his direction when they spotted him, and he quickly stabbed his left index finger with the needle. He stabbed his right index finger and thumb. Brazil squeezed out as much blood as he could, and smeared it on his face, which he then held in his hands as if he were reeling.

“Oh God,” he moaned, staggering down steps. “Jesus.” He fell against the porch railing, groaning, holding his disgusting, gory face.

“Shit.” Rizzo had gotten to him and was completely taken aback. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“My cousin in there,” Brazil weakly said.

“You talking about that fag you was sitting with?” asked Shifflet.

Brazil nodded. “Yeah, man. He’s fucking got AIDS and he threw up blood on me! You believe that! Oh God.”

He staggered down another step. Shifflet and Rizzo moved out of the way.

“It went in my eyes and mouth! You know what that means! Where’s a hospital around here, man? I got to get to the hospital! Could you drive me, please?”

Brazil staggered and almost stumbled into them. Shifflet and Rizzo ran. They leapt into their Nissan Hard Body XE with its four-foot-lift oversized tires that spun rocks.

TWENTY-FIVE

The next night, Monday, Blair Mauney III was also enjoying an agreeable meal in the Queen City. The banker was dining at Morton’s of Chicago, where he typically went when business called him to headquarters. He was a regular at the high-end steak house with stained-glass windows, next to the Carillon and across from First Presbyterian Church, which also had stained glass, only older and more spectacular, especially after dark when Mauney felt lonely and in the mood to prowl.

Mauney needed no explanation from the pretty young waitress with her cart of raw meat and live lobster waving bound claws. He always ordered the New York strip, medium rare, a baked potato, butter only, and the chopped red onion and tomato salad with Morton’s famous blue cheese dressing. This he downed with plenty of Jack Black on the rocks. Tomorrow he would have breakfast with Cahoon and the chairman of corporate risk policy and the chairman of the credit corp, in addition to the chairman of USBank South, plus a couple of presidents. It was routine. They’d sit around a fancy table in Cahoon’s fancy Mount Olympus office. There was no crisis or even good news that Mauney knew of, only more of the same, and his resentment peaked.