Niceville

menu and looking more at ease than Bock felt a sleazeball blackmailing midget gook wearing the Full Geek had any right to look.
    “I know what you look like,” the kid went on, speaking in a conversational tone, “since I have seen the naked pictures you take of yourself in front of the computer, sitting on that big black leather sofa.”
    Quite suddenly, Bock found that he had nothing snappy to come back with. His heart had jumped up his throat and was now trying to squeeze out his left ear. His hearing was gone and his voice was nowhere to be found.
    The kid seemed to understand this.
    “Try to be calm, Tony. I mean you no harm. But you see I
have
been all through your computer. I have seen all of your dirty-picture collection and your dirty-story collection. I know the websites you go to and how long you stay there and I have seen the webcam pictures you take of yourself while you are there.”
    He paused, saw the way Bock was taking this—he looked like he was going to either faint or throw up or both. Chu patted Bock’s arm in a comforting way, and then went back to his menu, speaking in the same calm voice.
    “Settle down, Tony. Don’t take this so seriously. This is not so bad. I only meant to say—I hope I can call you Tony?—that in the two hours I have had to study you, I feel that I know you better than I know my older brother in Macao, who is also a man who likes to use Photoshop to take the heads off his girlfriends and sisters and put them on the bodies of naked whores.”
    Bock’s eyes were on his hands.
    A vein was hammering at his temple and from somewhere deep down an alarm was going off.
    Heart attack stroke heart attack stroke
.
    Chu, if he was aware, rolled on anyway.
    “Once, if you will believe this, he even did this to a picture of our mother. He and I do not talk anymore after I let him know that I knew what he was doing, but he also stopped doing it. And so will you, if you are wise, and let me help you. I think I will have the red snapper and the wild rice. It looks good. Will we have some wine too? A white wine? Maybe a cold Pinot Grigio?”
    This was said in the same calm, clear voice, Chu smiling at Bock as he handed the menu across.
    Book took it in shaking hands, his guts turning into dishwater and flushing pink in the sun. He found that his lips were stiff and his cheeks cold and slack, as if all the blood had left them. He felt that he was melting down into himself, that the only solid and steely part left of Antony Bock was a collapsible baton located somewhere deep down in his underwear.
    He stared at what was left of his fourth Tequila Mockingbird, his hands in his lap, clutching the menu, and could not for any price have brought himself to look up at Andy Chu.
    “Please. You look sickly. I do not judge you,” said Andy Chu, not unkindly. “From what I can see, until yesterday, you have just used those pictures to please yourself, and I am not the one to say you are bad to do so. I would not be surprised to hear that everyone around us on this patio has sexual secrets they would not like to see exposed. That is just human nature.”
    Chu paused, changed his tone, and was now mildly scolding him.
    “But what you have done to that poor man down at the church, and to those innocent police officers who risked their lives—now that was very wrong. And I think you sent an e-mail this morning around ten thirty to somebody named Twyla Littlebasket. It had a very large attachment, after which you shredded a graphic file. I was unable to retrieve all of it. Was this more of your troublemaking, Tony?”
    Bock worked his mouth, trying to find enough spit to be able to talk, because something had to be said, if only to stop this kid from saying anything more. Chu, sensing this, handed him a glass of water and watched with cool sympathy as Bock drank it down in one long swallow.
    “You
couldn’t
. I shredded all my—”
    “
Tried
to, Tony. I got most of it. Enough.”
    “Look … Mr. Chu …”
    “Please, call me Andy.”
    “Look … Andy … this stuff, this is just too crazy to be talking about here … we oughta go—”
    The waitress with the ice cream bazookas shimmered up and smiled down upon them. Chu ordered his red snapper—well grilled—and the wild rice, and, glancing at Bock, seeing the state he was in, ordered the same for him.
    “May we also have a bottle of Santa Margherita, on ice, if you would?”
    The girl beamed upon them some more and