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There came no reply.

Payne locked eyes with Pringle, then after a long moment just shook his head.

You sorry sonofabitch! Payne thought.

Payne felt his phone vibrate, then looked at its screen, then looked back at Pringle.

“Thanks for your time, Deacon,” Payne said, and handed Pringle his business card. “Tell Lenny he’d better call me. Tell him I know a couple good doctors if he needs them to tend to those wounds. And tell him that Public Enemy Number One said there’s going to be a police presence out front until he turns up, dead or alive.”

Payne looked between Harris and Simpson.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, gentlemen,” he said.

Simpson gestured at Pringle’s chest.

“Nice shirt, by the way,” he said, then smiled. “FOAD.”

Pringle looked up at the big black cop. “Foad?”

Simpson nodded.

“Just a technical term used in police work.”

Payne and Harris exchanged glances and grinned.

Both were familiar with the acronym for Fuck off and die.

—

Tony Harris finally returned to the Crown Vic, where Payne now sat on the front fender, arms crossed over his chest.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Harris said. “Nature called, and you know you can never be sure if there’ll be another restroom downrange.” He then made a grand gesture of unlocking the vehicle, and added, “Don’t forget what our friends on police radio said about keeping the car secure . . .”

After they got in, sitting on the seat belts that they had left buckled, Harris snapped his cell phone in the spring-loaded polymer mount he had clipped to the air vent on the dashboard.

“Think you can get the heater going sometime this year?” Payne said, rubbing his hands together.

As Harris turned the ignition switch, his phone began ringing and the screen glowed. BLOCKED NUMBER popped up on it.

Payne reached to the dash and pushed the air temperature control as far in the red as possible and bumped up the fan speed. He felt cold air blow on his ankles.

“What’s up with all these damn blocked numbers?” Harris said, then tapped his fingertip on the SPEAKERPHONE button and answered the call with “Yeah?”

A woman’s voice, her tone even, said, “Okay, Harris, you never heard me say this . . .”

Payne motioned toward the phone and mouthed, Who?

There was a lot of background noise on the call, and Harris shrugged as the phone screen dimmed.

“. . . but,” she went on, “Hooks has—make that Hooks had—jewelry from the casino robbery in his mother’s house. There’s still a lot missing, but we’re pretty sure we now know where it’s stashed at the Shore.”

“Who is this?” Harris said.

“Thank me later,” she said, clearly avoiding the question, then went on: “We finally ran down enough leads—his girl Carmelita is a lively one once she gets talking, though she has the vocabulary of a longshoreman, both in English and Spanish—and had a look. You might want to visit his house—actually, the place belongs to his mother—which is at Monmouth and Hancock. You can’t miss the place. It’s got a small cabin cruiser in the side yard, which isn’t really a yard but where a row house once stood.”

“A cabin cruiser in Fairhill?” Harris heard himself automatically reply. “What the hell?”

The female caller laughed.