“Don’t joke like that.”

“Maybe I’m not joking.”

“Come on, Chance. Now you’re pissing me off.”

“Truth, then, the deepest kind. Your brother scares me, all right? He’s a dead-eyed, hard-core, scary motherfucker, and you need to think about that. Three years in Vietnam, two and a half in prison. You don’t even know him.”

“I know enough.”

“Do you, really?”

“This is what happened.” I raised my voice, but otherwise ignored the bait. “Sometime, somewhere, Tyra Norris met the wrong person or did the wrong thing. She made someone angry or stole something or screwed the wrong guy. We need to find out who and what and when. It’s that simple.”

“Simple? Really?” Chance frowned, looking washed-out, jaded, and afraid. “It’s a big world, man.”

“A big world,” I agreed.

But a fairly small city …

When we ran out of things to talk about, Chance walked me to the car, and tried to sum up the ideas we’d scraped together, the places we could theoretically start. “Bikers. Carriage Room. Sara.”

“Jason’s housemates.” I opened the driver’s-side door. “A job, if she had one. Old boyfriends. Any other places Jason might have taken her.”

“It’s not enough,” Chance said.

“It’s a start.”

We’d argued this point for a while. Swinging blind was dangerous.

“This whole thing,” Chance said. “It’s not hypothetical, is it?”

He leaned on the car, and I cranked the engine, gunning it hard to pretend I hadn’t heard.

“Look at me, dude.” He waited for my foot to come off the gas. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you’re lying to me. Do you think I’m afraid to go with you?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because things have been different between us,” Chance said. “Since the other day, I mean. We were in the car, coming back from Becky’s street, and we saw that billboard about the draft and all. You asked if I’d registered, and I said no, and I saw the way you looked at me.” Chance held my eyes, but swallowed hard. “Your brothers fought, and your father fought. I know you think about enlisting.”

“That doesn’t mean I think you’re afraid.”

“Do you remember the letter?” Chance asked. “The one requiring you to register for the Selective Service? I burned mine in the backyard. I’ve had two more since then, and I burned them, too. When I check the mail now, I want to vomit.” He looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be afraid, but I don’t want to die, either.”