John turned from the fountain, his nose crisscrossed in white bandages, the flesh around both eyes blue-black and puffy. “Excuse me,” he said, and came out from behind Manny and punched me in the face.

He threw himself into it so hard his feet left the ground, but I leaned back with it, took it on my temple after it had lost about half of its velocity. All and all, it was a pretty shitty punch. I’ve had bee stings that hurt more.

“What else your mother teach you besides boxing, John?”

Manny chuckled and the two big guys snickered.

“Laugh it up,” John said and stepped in close. “I’m the guy who owns the paper on your entire life now, Kenzie.”

I pushed him back, looked at Manny. “So this is your computer geek, eh, Manny?”

“Well, he’s not my muscle, Mr. Kenzie.”

I never saw Manny’s punch. Something in the center of my brain exploded and my whole face went numb and I was suddenly sitting on my ass on the wet cobblestone.

Manny’s buddies loved it. They high-fived and hooted and did little jigs as if they were about to piss their pants.

I swallowed against the vomit surging up through my alimentary canal and felt the numbness leave my face, replaced by pins and needles, a deep flush of blood rushing up behind my ears, and the sensation that my brain had been replaced by a brick. A hot brick, a brick on fire.

Manny held out his hand and I took it, and he lifted me to my feet.

“Nothing personal, Kenzie,” he said. “Next time you raise a hand to me, though, I’ll kill you.”

I stood on wobbly feet, still swallowing against the vomit, and the fountain seemed to shimmer at me from underwater.

“Good to know,” I managed.

I heard a loud rumble and turned my head to my left, watched a garbage truck lumber up Unity Street, its body so wide and the street so narrow that its wheels rolled along the sidewalk. I had a horrendous hangover, a probable concussion, and now I had to listen to a garbage truck clang and wheeze its way down Unity Street, banging trash cans against cement and metal the whole way. Oh, rapture.

Manny put his left arm around me and his right around Angie, guided us to sit beside him around the fountain. John stood over us and glared down at me, and the two steroid cases remained where they were, watching the entrances.

“I liked that shit you pulled with the cop last night,” Manny said. “That was good. ‘Manny, you sure you’ll take him to the hospital?’” He chuckled. “Christ. You’re very quick on your feet.”

“Thanks, Manny. Means so much coming from you.”

He turned to Angie. “And you, going right for those diskettes like you knew where they’d be all along.”

“I had no choice.”

“How’s that?”