It was the “her” that got him. He looked at me like I was death itself and cringed on the couch. His legs rose off the floor. His elbows tightened against his sparrow’s chest.

“Say it.”

“Desiree Stone, man. It was her.”

“Why?” Angie said.

“I don’t know.” He held out his hands. “Really. I don’t. Tony’d done some shit for her, something illegal, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. He just said stay away from the chick because she was bad fucking news, buddy.”

“But you didn’t stay away.”

“I did,” he said. “I did. But she, man, she came over here, like, supposedly to buy some weed, you know? And, man, she, I gotta tell ya, she, well, wow, is all I can say.”

“She screwed you so hard your eyes spun,” Angie said.

“My toes spun, man. And, like, all’s I can say is, well, she should have a ride named after her at Epcot. You know?”

“The cigarettes,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, right.” He looked down at his lap. “I didn’t know,” he said softly. “What was in them. I swear to God. I mean, Tony was my best friend.” He looked at me. “My best friend, man.”

“She told you to give him the cigarettes?” Angie said.

He nodded. “They were his brand. I was just supposed to leave them in his car. You know? But then we went driving and ended up down at the reservoir, and he lights one up and goes out into the water, and then he gets this funny look on his face. Like he’s stepping on something and he don’t like the way it feels? Anyway, that was it. Just that funny look on his face and he sorta touched his chest with his fingertips, and then he went under water.”

“You pull him out?”

“I tried. But it was dark. I couldn’t find him out there. So after like five minutes, I got scared. I left.”

“Desiree knew he had an allergic reaction to coke, didn’t she?” I said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Tony only did pot and booze, though as a Messenger and all, he wasn’t supposed to—”

“Lisardo belonged to the Church of Truth and Revelation?”

He looked up at me. “Yeah. Since he was, like, a kid.”

I sat on the arm of the couch for a moment, took a deep breath, got a mouthful of Donald Yeager’s pot fumes for my trouble.

“Everything,” Angie said.

I looked over at her. “What?”

“Everything this woman’s done since day one has been calculated. The ‘depression,’ Grief Release, everything.”

“How’d Lisardo become a Messenger?” I asked Donald.

“His mother, man, she’s kinda nutty ’cause her husband’s a loan shark and shit; she joined, forced Tony into it, about ten years ago. He was a kid.”

“How’d Tony feel about it?” Angie said.