I said, “Are you guys for real, or is this going to be on America’s Funniest Home Videos?” They sounded like Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. Brooklyn or the Bronx or Queens, but I couldn’t tell which. New Yorkers all sound alike.

The guy with the string tie took out a piece of pipe maybe ten inches long and Joey took a half-step forward. Joey said, “We got a message for you, Mickey Mouse. Pack your fuckin’ mouse ears and go back to Disneyland.”

I blinked at them. “Did Karen Lloyd put you guys on me?”

The string tie waved the pipe so I could see it better. “You don’t ask questions, fuck face. You just do what we say.” He was breathing hard and the nose whistle was loud. Even Joey looked.

I said, “That’s some nose whistle. Is it natural or did you have to stick something up in there?”

Joey said, “This fuck thinks we’re kidding.”

Johnny Style swung the pipe from somewhere out around the North Atlantic.

I stepped to the inside and hit him in the forehead with the two bottles of Rolling Rock. The broken glass cut through the bag and beer sprayed back along my arm and across the wall and the sidewalk. Johnny Style said, “Unh,” and dropped the pipe and fell backward over a curb stone. Joey sort of waddled forward, throwing a lot of overhand rights and lefts without much in the way of control, trying to do it the way he’d done it in schoolyards and on playgrounds for most of his life.

I sideslipped and hit him twice in the face and once in the neck and drove a straight kick from the tae kwon do into his solar plexus. He stopped swinging and made a sort of coughing sound and stepped back. Surprised.

I said, “What’s this got to do with Karen Lloyd?”

Joey made the coughing sound again, then something hard hit me behind my right ear and I went down. Third guy in the Thunderbird. I kicked up and punched, but I don’t think I hit him. My eyes weren’t working too well and it was hard to see through the starbursts. Joey leaned over and punched me some more in the ribs and again in the back of the head, saying, “You fuck! You fuck!” He was slow, and he was stupid, but he was strong. He lifted my head by the hair and sort of shook my head and said, “Get out of town and keep your mouth shut or we’ll turn you into a fuckin’ piece of hamburg. You got that? You got that, you fuck?” I tried a claw move at his eyes, but I missed. The guy with the string tie said, “Jesus Christ, I gotta get to a hospital.”