“We do.”

“Hope this shit don’t take long,” Toby said. “Me and my boys got a party over in Greenville tomorrow night. We sold out this motherfucking club by the railroad station, big-ass old warehouse, moonshine and black women twerking their big asses and all that countrified shit. You’d like it. You should go.”

“No thanks.”

“How ’bout we stop off at the titty bar on the way back?” Toby said. “I know the little girl I tore up last time would be real glad to see me. Wouldn’t mind a little time with her in the champagne room. Let her take my dog out for a little walk.”

“Not tonight,” Sam Frye said. “Tonight, we drive you far out in the country. We will stay to back unpaved roads where there is little light and no one to see us come or go. You will be the one who’ll go into this house and kill the man. Are you ready? Is that something you can do on your own?”

“I’ve done it before,” Toby said.

“Yes,” Sam Frye said. “But he was a man you knew and you wanted him dead. This man is nothing. I don’t even know what he looks like. Or even his name.”

“Then how will you know it’s even him?”

“Because there’s no one else,” Sam Frye said. “He’s an old man. He lives alone.”

“Why send us?”

Sam Frye shrugged, taking the last exit before the Tibbehah County line, trying to stay away from the big truck stop by the strip club a few miles down. He slowed into a small BP gas station, only four pumps and a little cinder-block store offering bait, tackle, and barbecue. Cajun boiled peanuts and ammo. He killed the lights and headed on inside to pay cash to fill up the tank. It was a wet, slick night and he didn’t want to stop again after they’d finished their business. A slick plastic sign popped in the wind reading BUD LIGHT WELCOMES HUNTERS.

When he got back to the car, he saw Toby fingering rounds into a .357 Magnum.

“You found the gun.”

“You told me it was under my seat.”

“Sometimes you look exactly like your father.”

“No thanks,” Toby said. “That’s not why I do this.”

“Not for the tribe?”

“For the goddamn money,” Toby Williams said. “The music I make is to honor the history of the tribe. What we’re doing here is nothing to be proud of, Sam. We’re just taking out the trash for Chief Robbie. Where the fuck is the honor in that?”

*   *   *

E. J. Royce was drunker than a goddamn skunk.