As she rides by

empty their wallets of everything but a ten-spot, separated their shoes from the bundle, stuck them in my bag, fastened the gunmetal Rolex around my wrist beside Miss Piggy, refastened the bundle, then lofted it up and over my favorite boulder. It landed on the road a few yards from the car, the little mirror, mirror on the rock told me.
    Another minute or two went by. Suddenly the driver scuttled into view, grabbed the bundle, then vanished again.
    Yet another 120 seconds or so ticked by, never to return, like my boyhood golden curls. Then the driver shouted up, “Hey, mother, where’s our fuckin’ shoes?”
    “Oh, shoot,” I said. “I meant to tell you, I lost them on the way up here.”
    “Any my fuckin’ watch?”
    “Got smashed all to hell,” I said, looking at it admiringly in the bright noonday sun and wondering if its depth gauge would work in my shower.
    “Bet your shit’s green, too,” came the impolite answer.
    After a final, brief hiatus, Phil and Ted appeared, fully clothed, and, keeping as far over to my side of the road as possible—to give me less sight of them but more chance of dropping a rock on their heads, which they didn’t think of—they made their way cautiously up to the Mercedes, then past it.
    When the driver, the one with the cannon, paused and then turned back for a moment, I called out hastily, just in case, “No good taking it out on the car, it’s only a lease.” I did have my fingers crossed at the time, so it wasn’t really a lie, kids.
    The second, the very second, they disappeared out of sight around the next bend, I was out of my hidey-hole and slithering as quietly as possible back down to ground level. I reasoned as follows: If they had any brains at all, and it had already been conclusively demonstrated that at least one of them did, I reasoned that they would reason as follows:
    One: Now we got him trapped without him having us trapped, because he’s stoopid.
    Two: So what we do is what he just did—find a place out of sight and wait till he pokes his dumb head around the corner and then, whammo!
    Three: That way not only does he get what he’s got coming, but we get back all our bread and the Rollie and any bread he’s got plus his peashooter plus our fuckin’ shoes and, if not ours, bet that faggot packed a dozen pairs at least; also maybe the Mere’ll take us out to the main road, fuck driving on the rims.
    Four: Remember, the fuck’s gotta come out sometime, he’s got nowhere else to go.
    Ah, but V. (for Victor) Daniel did have somewhere else to go is what they didn’t know. In fact, he had two choices—he could either go riding on a bicycle exerciser, or go surfboarding on the briney.
    Which did he choose?
    Well, the surf was up, beach bunnies. So...
    Cowabunga!

Chapter Eight

    He’d bought himself a truck or two and he’d found himself a Cherokee girl—
    I know he’ll send the dinero the very day he gets the word.

    O ne jiff later I had the surfboard unfastened from the roof rack and was hotfooting it seaward, taking a handful of those stretchy elastic things along, also Phineas’s expensive-looking carbon tennis racket in its plastic half-case. Although I hadn’t said anything at the time, I had wondered why he’d bothered to pack a tennis racket for a sea cruise but figured perhaps he knew something about sea cruises I didn’t; now it seemed like a brilliant idea.
    I paused for a breath in front of the shell of the Lewellens’ manse, then clambered down the concrete steps to the small dock. Once there, I cocked an ear—nothing but the gentle sound of rippling water and breaking swells could I hear, which was fine by me. Then I zipped open my bag, consigned Phil and Ted’s footwear to the deep, dumped my toilet articles out of their supposedly waterproof plastic case, replaced them with the camera, the weapon, and my wallet, then zipped up everything again, then lashed the bag to the board with stretchy elastic things. Then I lowered the board the few feet into the water, grasped the tennis racket firmly, then took a deep breath, pulled my sagging trousers back up over the knees as far as they would go, then began to lower myself onto the board. Something caught my eye—my shoes and socks. I released my hold on the tennis racket. I pulled the board back up on the slippery dock, undid the stretchy elastic things, opened the bag, stuffed shoes and socks inside, closed bag, lashed bag, relaunched board, regrasped racket, then