That first night he made the mistake of sleeping after the sun was down and woke up to some asshole tugging on his snakeskins. He put up a struggle and the thieving prick gave him a slash on his cheek for his troubles. The wound still throbbed, likely infected.

He hadn't had a thorough wash-up since the hospital and knew he must stink to high heaven. But the glory of his quest purified him, kept the ungodly stench from reaching his nostrils.

Jimmy Joe Barclay—same name as his daddy, Joseph James Barclay, only reversed—was on a spiritual quest. He had no fear of God, not like his momma, but he did possess a healthy, respectful fear of the Devil.

While God sat up on high, only intervening when it behooved Him, Beelzebub lived among men, poisoning their hearts and corrupting their minds. Why would the world be hip-deep in shit if it weren't true?

Marty Savage was a child of Satan himself. Ol' Jimmy had plenty of time in the loony bin to mull things over and he knew that as a certainty. Someone ought to have carved Marty whole and squirming from his mother's still-living womb and choked the life out of him with the umbilical cord.

Since they hadn't, that put the task to Gimme Jimmy, like the boys used to call him when he'd get to struttin. When God delivered Marty unto him the same as He had the Commandments unto Moses, Jimmy Barclay, Ol' Gimme Jimmy, he knew he'd been Chosen. And like Moses or Abraham, he would not hesitate to do what needed doing when the time came.

And that time was nigh on coming now. Jimmy could feel it in his bones. He just had to find the son of a bitch first. But Providence smiled on those who were diligent and no one could say Connie Barclay's boy wasn't that.

The cop was the key, this Detective Lumsden. He flipped the cop's business card over his knuckles from finger to finger, like the old coin trick he'd learned when he was a shy, lonely little Kentucky boy with no friends to give him nicknames, no purpose, no sense of the larger world around him, no light of God shining within.

He left the agent's body spilling blood on the faux-leather front seat with the passenger door wide. Eventually some hobo or punk kid would be brave and stupid enough to roll the corpse out the door and take it for a joyride, get picked up by the cops.

In the meantime, Ol' Gimme Jimmy had many miles ahead of him. The agent made it clear Marty was no longer in this stinking cesspool of a city. It was likely he'd gone back to Connecticut, to a town called Stratford, where according to the agent Marty still had kin.

Jimmy Barclay left the alley. The echo of his bootheels clocking on asphalt pleased him, as the first steps in a long journey always did.