“Would he have killed you if I hadn’t gotten you out of there?”

“For sure. I was a dead man.”

“All because you made some bad bets.”

Vinnie remoted the television on, flipped through about twenty channels, and gave it up. “Sunflower’s in trouble. He needs money, and he needs respect. He’s in the middle of a war, and he can’t show weakness.”

“What war? Who’s he fighting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should go into therapy at one of those sex addiction places. Do you think that would get me off the hook?”

“Maybe with Lucille. I don’t think Harry’ll buy it.”

My arm was scraped and the knee was torn out of my jeans from the fall. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t crashed into the SUV. I limped out of the living room, closed the door on Vinnie, started to undress, and noticed I’d missed a call from Morelli on my cell phone.

“Hey,” Morelli said when I called him back.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Just checking to see if you’re home. Shots were fired at Sunflower’s apartment building tonight.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Good point,” Morelli said. “We also got a report of shots being fired from Vinnie’s house. Lucille said she was shooting at a rat.”

“That neighborhood’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

“Should I be worried?” Morelli asked me.

“Hard to say.”

Morelli disconnected, and I limped into the bathroom, where I stood in the shower until all the rust was washed out of my hair. When I was done, I looked at the shampoo bottle. Empty. My refrigerator was also empty. I needed money. I needed to make another capture.

VINNIE WAS BACK to wearing only his underwear. He was in my kitchen, unshaven, his hair spiked up from sleep, his eyes half open.

“Where’s the coffee?” he asked. “Where’s the orange juice?”

“I don’t have any,” I told him. “I need to go shopping.”

“I need coffee. Lucille always had my coffee ready.”

“There’s no Lucille,” I told him. “Get used to it. And after today, there’s no me. You can’t stay here.”

“Where will I go?”

“Stay with one of your friends.”

“I don’t have friends,” Vinnie said. “I have hookers and bookies. And my bookie wants to shoot me.”

“Do you have money?”

Vinnie flapped his arms. “Do I look like I have money? My wallet was left behind with my pants. Maybe we should go back and check out the lawn in front of my house to see if Lucille tossed out cash and credit cards along with my clothes.”

“What about the office? Don’t you keep petty cash? Doesn’t Connie have a corporate credit card?”

“We might have a small cash flow problem,” Vinnie said.

“How small?”

“We might be a million in the red, give or take a couple bucks.”

“What?”

“It’s complicated,” Vinnie said. “Bookeeping issues. We have too many outstanding skips.”

“I have a stack of skips in my bag that I’m working on, but I don’t think they add up to a million. And what about the bankers who underwrite you?”