Still, Dex couldn't afford to wait for Ricci to go the distance from bein' suspicious of him to reachin' any right conclusions, short a hop as that was. Maybe he didn't run off at the mouth about himself like so many flatlanders did, telling you everythin' about their lives from A through Z within five minutes of makin' your acquaintance, but once in a while Ricci would mention something about when he was a police detective down in Beantown, an' furthermore, Dex's buddy Hugh Temple, whose girlfriend's sister Alice worked at the real estate office in town, said she'd heard from her boy-friend worked at the Key Bank that Ricci used to be in some hotshit military outfit like the Rangers or Navy SEALs or maybe the Boy Commandos--whatever the fuck--before his cops-and-robbers days. That particular bit a' scuttlebutt hadn't surprised Dex, 'cause there was times when all you had to do was look in his eyes to see that he could be one dangerous son of a bitch to anybody who got on his wrong side.

Dex shook a cigarette from the pack in the breast pocket of his mackinaw, shoved it between his lips, and cupped a hand over its tip as he fired up his Bic lighter. He stood there smoking at the gunwale, his eyes following Ricci's stream of bubbles. Truth was, he'd got on okay with Ricci, who always gave him an even shake as far as business went, and never treated anybody as if he was their better, the way a lot of folks from out of town did as a matter of course, especially the summer people with their kayaks, canoes, an' mountain bikes on the roof racks of their whale-sized, showroom-new 4 x 4 wagons.

Those people, they'd stand around the middle of town in bunches of five, six, an' more, wearin' white shorts an' sneakers that matched their perfect white teeth, never movin' aside to let you pass, talkin' so loud you'd think every one of 'em was deaf as a board. Cloggin' the sidewalk as if they owned it, an' couldn't damn well see themselves sharin' the street with anybody, like they was on some kinda movie set that was laid out just for them on Memorial Day, an' got packed away into storage after they headed south come September, gatherin' dust an' cobwebs until the next summer of fun rolled round.