“Ah, yes,” Talbot said, nodding. “Lam told me he did community service for the last part of it. Delivered meals to old people.”

Karen blew smoke out the half-open window and tapped her ash against the edge of the glass. “I wouldn’t know,” she said again.

Talbot started the car. A moment later they were rolling, the tires crackling over the gravel as they crept along the front of the terminal toward a Firebird, its red-orange grille watching them like an angry face. Talbot inched the Newport forward until the two bumpers touched.

“Hey!” a voice called from the other car. The driver’s door opened and Seth Colby emerged, his pale T-shirt glowing in the lamplight. He stepped around the door, pushed a hand through the blond wings of his hair, and fixed his eyes on the meeting point of the two cars. “Get your shit off my shit.”

Talbot backed the Newport up a foot. He turned the engine off, got out of the car, and hopped up onto its expansive hood.

Colby took a stance and pulled a flask of something from his back pocket. When he drank from it, his shoulders twitched.

“Welcome back to the land of the living dead. Give us a swig.”

“Chew me,” Colby said. “There’s beer, though—we picked up a case. Who’re you with?”

“Who’re you with?”

“Couple of bastards.”

Colby snapped his fingers toward the Firebird and Talbot followed his lead, knocking his fist against the Newport’s hood. “Send in the clowns.”

Doors opened on both cars, and two young men spilled out of the Firebird. Karen recognized them as the identical twins with Boston accents who transferred to her high school during her junior year. Stoners, she remembered, double trouble, though as far as she knew, they’d graduated. They swaggered up to either side of Colby and stared down at the bumper of the Firebird. The one hugging a case of beer against his chest said, “He banged up ya cah.”

“Gentlemen,” Talbot announced, taking a slight bow and doing a double flourish with his middle fingers, “this is Cousin Lefty, just in from Boca. And …” He let his voice trail off.

Karen remained in the backseat of the Newport. She watched Colby, who had opened a hunting knife and was already launching into a story, moving around the gravel like an overly wound toy.

“So I just told him, ‘Shitwad, one more crack about my height and I’ll put you in a box, even if it means going right back to the place I just got out of.’ I told him it was Raiford. He didn’t know any better.”

“What did he do?” one of the twins asked.