When he asked if I’d turn on the TV, I couldn’t think of a reason not to. He finished his dinner watching a cop show and wanted to take a shower. I could smell him from across the room, so I tossed him the keys so he could undress. Though I’d seen him without clothes in Czarnecki’s shed, he seemed even more pitiful now: skin stretched over bulging bones, muscles wasted away, toothpick legs. The butterfly tattoo on his chest and gold tooth were like diamond earrings and a tiara on a corpse. I let him bathe without cuffs. There was no danger of him slipping out through the tiny window in the bathroom.

He was steadier on his feet afterward, stood a little straighter. I gave him a T-shirt and a pair of pants from my duffel. They hung on him like he was a scarecrow, but at least they were clean. Then I told him to get back into his chains. We were going hunting.

He locked himself in next to me in the truck, and we drove up and down the Strip. When we passed the Sands, I recalled when you and I stayed there. That was a good time. We saw Redd Foxx and Wayne Newton, laid out by the pool, and ate steak and lobster two dinners in a row. I’ll have different kinds of memories after this visit, terrible ones. That’s how it is now: Everything good in my past is being swallowed by a rising tide of horror.

After an hour with no sign of a rover, I switched to Fremont Street downtown. Remember how it is there, casinos crammed together cheek by jowl, tourists overflowing the sidewalks? You said the lights and noise hypnotized them into throwing away their money. Sally and I crawled past the crowds with our windows down, and it was like bees buzzing in a sparkling hive.

The kid had been quiet since we left the motel. Czarnecki accused him of playing games, of not pointing out rovers when he spotted them, and I wondered if he might be doing me the same way. A block later, though, he whistled and said, “Bingo.”

It was a white woman, tall, skinny, blond hair piled on top of her head. She looked to be in her thirties and was wearing a short dress and the kind of high heels meant to attract attention. I kept pace with her as she bopped down the sidewalk, but then she ducked into the Golden Nugget.

“Are you sure?” I asked Sally.

“I’m sure,” he said.