It took Decker over three hours to find a place, and after so many twists and turns and dead ends, he wasn’t even sure it was the place. It was underneath deserted elevated train tracks, a few blocks from the numbers that Donatti had given him. He had followed instructions, but Chris had given him right and left, instead of east and west. Decker was somewhere out in Jersey, that much he knew, away from anything populated, away from anything civilized. The last city that he remembered driving through was Camden—a poverty-stricken, blighted, poorly lit area of deteriorating brick tenements and boarded-up, abandoned buildings. Some time ago, Decker recalled reading an article about urban renewal in the city. From what he had seen, it wasn’t evident.

It was almost eleven. Standing in dirty, damp mist that chilled him down to the marrow, with only a tire jack at his feet for protection, he rocked on his soles and rubbed his bare hands constantly to keep sensation in his fingertips. Why the hell did he give his gloves to Luisa? Ah well, maybe he’d pump her later on and she’d remember his act of chivalry… give him something juicy to work with.

His car was parked fifty yards away—as close as he could get to the spot. Distant highway sounds could be heard—a roar of a motorcycle, the rumble of a big rig, an occasional honk. Beyond manufactured noise, the area was eerily silent.

New Jersey, home to “Born in the USA” Bruce Springsteen. Decker knew there were gorgeous and wealthy neighborhoods in the state, but this wasn’t one of them. Didn’t TV always put the mobsters’ dump spot somewhere in the Garden State? Was that why Donatti had chosen it? Had he dumped bodies here before?

A blare sounded in the distance: something that was traveling because of the Doppler effect—the wave of noise advancing, then receding. A series of hoots. Owls, possibly? Then once again there was nothing, a creepy stillness that was worse than the creaks and the cracks.

And what if Donatti didn’t show?

Then that would be that.

At the moment, the option sounded all right to Decker, much better than freezing his nuts off in the middle of nowhere. Breathing in soot and grime, continuously looking over his shoulder or behind his back because any second he might get sliced up by some fifteen-year-old psycho punk with nothing better to do. One side of Decker was almost hoping that C.D. would revert to his pathological lying self and pull a tilt. Donatti was a funny bastard. He wasn’t evil for evil’s sake, but he was self-serving and amoral—an unscrupulous son of a bitch who did evil things, and that made his moves even harder to figure out. An evil man will kill and rob and rape for the thrill, for the fun and games. An amoral man like Donatti had no problems with killing and robbing, but he didn’t do it for kicks. He did the deeds, sure, but only if they were in his best interest.