“When did you pick them up?” I said.

“They were pulling onto the Jeffers access road as I turned out. Late 1950s Mercury Monterey.”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“Dark red and bronze. Four-door. Fins and everything. I got a decent look at the driver. A buddy riding shotgun. More in the back. Everybody dressed for the sock-hop after the Friday night game.”

I got the picture.

“Allow me to repeat: Are you fucking kidding?”

“Assholes were in a hurry too. Pulled a U-turn and came after us like a bat outta hell. Somebody with a stake in that property finally noticed us meddling kids.”

Elevation rose and fell and rose with a vengeance. At seventy miles per hour the highway grade was slippery. I didn’t recognize any of the winding, bumpy road. The monotone GPS patiently recalculated no matter how many turns Lionel blew past. Obviously, he intended to keep this encounter off the radar and in the boonies.

“Isaiah, you once told me a rule,” he said. “We were drunk as hell, talking about our old lives. The high points, the pitfalls. Shit that civilians don’t know, couldn’t know. You asked, ‘What trips a man up in this business?’ It stuck with me, what you said next.”

“A grizzled killer showed me the light in the darkness.”

The grizzled killer in this case was the late, great, and greatly lamented Gene Kavanaugh. Gene K, the Ace of Spades. The Old Man on the Mountain. A world-class hitter and my mentor. His ghost lingered in the gallery of my conscience. Daily, he had more company.

“‘Not knowing the big picture is a leading cause of on-the-job death.’ Your words. You were referencing mobsters, but it’s got universal appeal. Being kept in the dark is practically a soldier’s creed. To similar detriment.”

Another straightaway and I made the pursuing vehicle. A classic Mercury, as Lionel had said; probably souped-up. I unbuckled, leaned over the seat, rummaged in the storage compartment, and got ahold of the Mossberg. By then, we’d whipped around a couple more curves and were rumbling atop a saddleback ridge.

I loaded the shotgun.

“‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die.’”

“Do and die. Ain’t no ‘or’ about it,” he said. “Tennyson’s heroic logic proves mighty convenient for the pricks running the show.”

“A man who doesn’t know the big picture finds it hard to stay alive.”

“Impossible to duck the ax-swing you don’t see coming. Amigo, I feel like we’re not getting the big picture.”

I didn’t think he was wrong.

The engine made a throaty growl you won’t ever hear unless you push the speedometer beyond ninety. We sailed over dips and tortured the suspension upon each momentary impact with the asphalt. I braced my free arm against the roof to avoid cracking my skull.

The Mercury closed steadily. It careened over a rise and vanished. The road descended into a hollow and ran across several miles of level farmland that spread like a pastoral painting. Smoke coiled above a farmhouse and that was it; even the cows were in for the winter.