After dinner ended with a wonderful pecan pie, Manfred offered to do the dishes. Joe gratefully accepted his help. “If Chuy does the cooking, it seems only fair I clean up,” he said, “but it’s always nice to have another pair of hands.” Most of the supper dishes went into the dishwasher, but Manfred scrubbed the pots and pans while Joe dried them. Afterward, Chuy showed them some snapshots of his and Joe’s vacation in Amsterdam, one of the many places Manfred had not been.

As Manfred and Bobo walked home around ten o’clock, conversation was sparse. “Nice dinner,” Manfred said, and after Bobo replied, “Man, those chicken enchiladas . . .” they were both done with talk, but in a content way. Manfred thought the evening had accomplished part of its goal, in getting Bobo out of his shell. Manfred himself had enjoyed the company because it was not one of his “sensitive” nights, when he learned more than he wanted to know about his companions.

But he was the one who noticed the car parked across Witch Light Road between the empty two-story building (its ghost of a sign read RÍO ROCA FRÍA HOTEL 1920) and the Home Cookin Restaurant. The car was deep in a shadow. Even as he recognized the shape of an automobile roof, Manfred was reluctant to emerge from the haze of well-being, but he couldn’t ignore the alarm bells going off in his head. He grabbed Bobo’s jacket sleeve and yanked him into the alley behind Gas N Go.

“What the hell?” Bobo protested, but mildly.

“Someone’s parked over there in the shadows,” Manfred whispered. Bobo appeared to hear that silent alarm signal, too, because he instantly moved farther back into the shadows. “Do you see any people?” he asked. He didn’t whisper, but his voice was very quiet.

“No, and that worries me even more,” Manfred said.

“’Cause we’re right behind you,” a man’s voice said from the shadows.

Manfred wasn’t ashamed to tell Fiji the next day that he screamed like a teenage girl in a horror movie.

But even as he screamed, he jumped toward danger, not away from it. So did Bobo. Manfred hadn’t been in many fistfights—or fights of any sort—but he figured if he kept punching he’d hit something, and he swung away like a wiry windmill. Bobo gave a more practiced exhibit of self-defense.

“Help!” yelled Manfred, which was probably the most useful thing he could have done. He had no idea who might hear him in Midnight, but he had to try. To his astonishment, a light came on as the back door of Gas N Go flew open, and Creek Lovell charged out swinging a baseball bat.