“What do you mean?” Gannon said, thumbing his cheap sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “What does who keep saying?”

“In the song,” Ruby said, pointing at the speaker.

Gannon bopped his head to the steel drum rhythm, listening.

“Party in the backyard,” he said with a grin. “I tink, mon.”

Ruby smiled.

“Any word?” she said, checking her watch.

She was talking about Stick. He had headed down to Miami three hours before. In his younger days, Stick had worked on loan from the NYPD as an undercover with the Miami DEA, and he had gone down there to ask an old criminal informant for a favor.

“No, not yet,” Gannon said, glancing at his burner phone, “but don’t worry—he’ll make it.”

“You know,” Ruby said, looking at him intently. “I was thinking about what you did back in New York.”

“What do you mean?” Gannon said.

“How you got us out of the hotel, took down that agent and those other armed men. Opening the wall of the precinct? Not to mention your expert work with the wastepaper basket.”

Gannon laughed.

“So what about it?”

“What was it that you actually did in the NYPD?” Ruby said.

As Gannon opened his mouth, a huge cruise ship from the nearby Princess terminal let off its departure air horn. Just as it stopped, Stick came out of the terminal door behind them. He looked even more ridiculously touristy than they did in his surfer jam shorts, golf visor and yellow T-shirt that said California Dreaming on it.

“So did you get it?” Gannon said.

“Did I get it?” Stick said, flicking their new fake Florida driver’s licenses across the outdoor table’s white metal top like a blackjack dealer.

Gannon thumbed the waxy paper and looked back at the Walgreens picture of himself that had been taken this morning. He nodded, impressed.

“These are good, Stick. They look real,” he said.

“They are real, or so my guy claims,” he said. “There’s a guy in the DMV who he gets them from.”

“Even the DMV is corrupt, huh,” Ruby said. “Is nothing sacred?”

“How much? Five hundred apiece?” Gannon said.

“Six actually,” Stick said with a nod.

“I’ll pay you back when we get down to my house. Hope hundreds are okay,” Gannon said.

“Sure,” Stick said. “Hundreds are cool.”

“Or diamonds. We could do diamonds,” Gannon said.

“Diamonds? Hmm. I know the ladies like those things. Let me think about it,” Stick said.

“Wait, Jessica Roberts?” Ruby said, annoyed as she squinted at her license.

“What do you want?” Stick said. “You kinda look like Julia Roberts to me, so I went with it.”

“She was a movie star back in the olden days of the eighties,” Gannon explained.

“Duh,” Ruby said. “I’m thirty-five, Mike, not ten. Steel Magnolias, Mystic Pizza. I’ve heard of her. But Jessica? Ugh. Jessica?”

“Hey, you’re lucky. Look at my new name,” Gannon said, showing her his ID.

“Burt Clancy,” Ruby said. “Stick, really? Burt? That’s the worst name in the history of names.”