“That crazy old bastard Chuck! We never should’ve hooked up with him. That was all Tanya. I think she had, like, daddy issues. We were doing good with the gold and silver thing. Making some solid buys. I wanted to move on to the next town. You know, before things got complicated here in Treasure Island. Tanya, she wanted to stay.”

“You were already thinking of dumping her, right?” Vikki asked.

“It crossed my mind,” he admitted. “I don’t know why I always manage to get mixed up with chicks who are batshit crazy. That night, me and Chuck wanted to go to the dog track. Tanya was being a whiny pain in the ass, so we left her at the motel. I won a couple quinellas and a perfecta. A real winning streak. But Tanya kept calling and texting, so I just turned my phone off. Who needs that shit when you’re winning? Am I right?”

Vikki rolled her eyes. “Totally.”

“Chuck said he knew some girls who worked at a strip club over near MacDill. That’s the air force base. He wanted to have some drinks and get laid, and I thought, okay, whatever. But that’s when I turned my phone on and saw the text from Tanya. So we headed back over to the beach, to check things out. But the motel parking lot was crawling with cops. I said we should stop, but Chuck insisted we should go on back to Tampa.”

“As if,” Vikki said. “I’m sure you were super worried about Tanya.”

“I knew Tanya could handle things.”

“But the loot was back at the Surf, right?” Joe put in.

“The plan was we’d go back over there to the motel after things quieted down, and we’d get the stuff and blow town.”

“But even the best-laid plans, right?” Vikki said.

“Huh? Anyway, we went back over to the club, and Chuck got shitfaced, and when he got like that, he turned mean. Like, crazy mean. We were on the way out of the club with the girls, and the bouncer said something to Chuck, and the next thing I know, that crazy bastard pulled a knife on the bouncer. The dude was half his age and twice his size! Then the cops came and things were getting real. I managed to slip away in the confusion.”

“Lucky you,” Joe said. “So, Tanya’s in jail in St. Pete, Chuck’s in jail in Tampa, and you’re footloose and fancy-free. But you still don’t know where the loot was hidden. Am I right?”

Rooney rubbed his jaw again. “I don’t have to talk to you people. I’m in pain here.” He reached for a cord tethered to the side of his bed and made a show of pushing the call button. In another minute, the door opened and a nurse popped his head in.

“Everything okay in here?”