Bad Men

She reached out and touched his arm.

“Just tell me: were you asking with your cop’s hat on, or your prospective date’s hat on?”

He blushed. “A little of both, I guess.”

“Well, now you know. I still want to see you tomorrow. I’ve even taken my best dress out of mothballs.”

He smiled, and she watched him walk to his car before she closed the door behind him. She let out a sigh and leaned back against the door.

Dead.

Her husband was dead.

Maybe if she said it often enough, it might come true.

Bill had curled himself into a ball against the wall, his hands over his ears to block out the noises coming from the bedroom. His eyes were squeezed tightly closed. Only the feel of the gun muzzle against his forehead forced him to open them again. Slowly, he took his hands away from his ears. There was now silence.

It was a small mercy.

“You’re a pitiful man,” said Moloch. “You let another man take your woman, and you don’t even put up a fight. How can you live with yourself?”

Bill spoke. His voice was cracked, and he had to cough before he could complete a coherent sentence.

“You’d have killed me.”

“I’d have respected you. I might even have let you live.” He dangled the prospect of life before Bill, like a bad dog being taunted with the treat destined to be denied it.

“How did you find me?”

“If you’re going to run away, Bill, then you keep your head down and try not to fall into your old ways. But once a bad gambler, always a bad gambler. You took some hits, Bill, and then you found that you couldn’t pay back what you owed. That kind of mistake gets around.”

Bill’s eyes closed again, briefly.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

“Us,” corrected Moloch. “You know, Bill, I’m starting to think that you don’t really care about your wife, or that woman in the bedroom. What is her name, by the way?”

“Je

Moloch seemed puzzled. “She doesn’t look like a Je

“I don’t know where your wife is.”

“Where they are,” said Moloch. “Jesus, Bill, you only think in the singular. It’s a very irritating habit that you may not live long enough to break. She has my son, and my money.”

“She hasn’t been in touch.”

“Willard,” said Moloch.

Willard’s bleak, lazy eyes floated toward the older man.

“Break one of his fingers.”

And Willard did.

Joe Dupree checked in briefly with the station house. All was quiet, according to Tuttle. As soon as Berman returned, he’d turn in for an hour or two, he said, try to get some sleep.

Dupree drove down unmarked roads, for most of the streets on the island were still without names. It took the cops who came over from the mainland a few years to really get to know the island, which was why those who took on island duty tended to stick with it for some time. You had to learn to always get a phone number when anyone called, because people still referred to houses by reference to their neighbors-even if those neighbors no longer lived there, or had died. You figured out landmarks, turnings, forks in the road, and used them as guides.

Dupree returned again to thoughts of Maria

Dexter came out of the room just as Bill stopped screaming.

“I’m glad you did that now, and not earlier,” he told Moloch. “You might have put me off my game.”

Bill was crying again. His face was pale with shock.

“You okay, Bill?” asked Moloch. He sounded genuinely concerned. “Nod if you’re okay, because when you’ve recovered, Willard can move on to the next finger. Unless, of course, you think you might have something more to tell us?”

Bill was trembling. He looked up and saw the clock on the mantel over Moloch’s left shoulder.

“Aw, shit,” he said. His eyes flicked toward the half-open bedroom door. He could see Je

“You worried about her coming back, maybe finding out about your little piece on the side? Answer me, Bill. I want to hear your voice. It’s impolite to nod. You nod at me again, or make me wait longer than two seconds for an answer, and I’ll have Willard here break something you have only one of.”

“Yes,” croaked Bill. “I’m worried about her finding out.”

“A more self-aware man might have realized by now that he had bigger problems to face than his wife discovering his affair. You are a remarkable man, Bill, in your capacity to blind yourself to the obvious. Now, where is my family?”

“I told you, she hasn’t been in touch, not with me.”

“Ah, now we’re making progress. If she hasn’t been talking to you-and I’ve got to be honest here, Bill, I’d prefer not to be talking to you either, so I can understand her point of view-then she has been talking to her sister, right?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re such a piece of shit, Bill, that even your own wife won’t tell you where her sister is.”

“She doesn’t tell me anything.”

“But you must know how they communicate?”

“Phone, I guess.”

“Where are your phone records?”

“In the cabinet by the TV. There’s a file. But she never uses the house phone. I’ve looked.”

“Does she receive mail?”

“Yes.”

“Where does she keep it?”

“In a locked box in the bottom drawer of her nightstand.”

Moloch nodded at Willard, and the boy went into the bedroom to search for the box.

As he left the room, car headlights brightened the hallway, briefly illuminating their faces and casting fleeting shadows across the room. Leonie pressed the gun against Bill’s teeth, forcing him to open his mouth, then shoved the barrel inside.

“Suck it,” she whispered. “I see your lips move from it and I’ll pull the trigger.”

From the bedroom came the sound of sudden movement: Je

She stepped into the living room. She was older than he remembered her as being, but then it had been more than five years since they had last met. In the interim, Moloch had been betrayed and they had run, scattering themselves to the four winds, inventing new lives for themselves. Even with Moloch behind bars, they remained fearful of reprisals.

Patricia had long, lush hair like her younger sister’s, but there was more gray in it. She wasn’t as pretty, either, and had always looked kind of worn down, but that was probably a consequence of being married to an asshole like Bill. Moloch, who didn’t care much either way, still wondered why she had stayed with him. Maybe, after all the fear, she needed someone even semireliable to stand beside her.