Niceville

the evening magnolias gave off their scent.
    Spanish moss shivered in the scented breeze and the live oak branches creaked and groaned in the blue velvet darkness over Merle’s head.
    At fifteen minutes to eleven, the Blue Bird bus wheezed around the corner, lurched to a halt in a squeal of brakes. The driver came down and stood on the steps, smiling as all the riders lined up politely. The man greeted each person with a kind word. When they had all taken their seats, he got back behind the wheel, put the bus in gear, and drove away into the darkness beyond the edge of town.

Danziger and Coker Consider the Lilies of the Field
    Coker maintained a kind of informal pharmacy in his house, as a defense against an accidental overdose of reality, which was sure as hell the case with Twyla Littlebasket. She had cried herself into a puddle on his leather couch and was now lying there curled up into a ball of inconsolable grief, staring up at Coker and Danziger with a wounded look in her wide brown eyes.
    She was wearing her version of a dental hygienist’s outfit, a tight powder blue smock that buttoned down the front, and it had ridden up her thighs as she lay there.
    Looking at a pretty young girl in that state of semi-erotic-undress made it sort of hard for either man to pull out a pistol right there and shoot her, which they had both agreed was the only sensible thing to do, considering what she had seen piled up on the kitchen counter. But there was a limit to what even a hard man could do, at least without a couple of hits of Jim Beam under his belt.
    So instead of shooting her, Coker had drawn on his pharmacy for a few Valiums, sharing them equally with Twyla and Danziger. He watched as Danziger covered her up with a soft blanket and smoothed her cheek with a gentle hand until she drifted off to a fitful sleep.
    When she was asleep, Coker and Danziger looked at each other, shook their heads, and walked out into the golden afternoon light, going all the way down to the bottom of Coker’s driveway for a smoke and a consultation.
    They lit up and stood there together, looking out at all the civiliansup and down the tree-shaded block, with their gardens and their lawns and their uncomplicated lives.
    “Bet none of these folks have to kill a dental hygienist this evening,” said Coker, watching a slightly wavy dad teaching his toddler how to pull-start a gas-powered weed whacker.
    “Guess they don’t,” said Danziger.
    A pause, while they inhaled and exhaled and generally felt the nicotine and the Valiums and the Jim Beam doing their holy work.
    The sun was warm on their cheeks and the air was hazy with glowing mist. The Glades smelled like flowers and cut grass and barbecue smoke.
    “How would
you
do it?” asked Coker.
    Danziger sipped his Jim Beam, looked down at his bloodstained navy blue boots, which reminded him that he had yet to fill Coker in on just how much plug-ugly trouble they were looking at.
    “You mean Twyla?”
    Coker nodded.
    “Right now, I’m thinking she overdoses after finding those nudie shots on her e-mail.”
    “I sure would,” said Coker, thinking about those shots. “What a twisted old motherfucker. Good old Morgan Littlebasket, pillar of the Cherokee community.”
    “Wonder who sent them?” Danziger asked.
    “And how did
that
puke get them?”
    “These are good questions. We will address them later. I was thinking maybe we ought to kill old Morgan Littlebasket first? Maybe let her watch?”
    “Maybe let her do him herself?” said Coker. “Give her the satisfaction? Then pop her afterwards, while she’s still on a high?”
    He thought that over, and then shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think she has it in her to shoot her daddy, not even for taking nudie shots of her.”
    “She had it in her to blackmail Donnie Falcone for fifty large,” observed Danziger after a moment.
    “So she did,” said Coker.
    “This is all getting a bit …”
    “Complex?” suggested Danziger.
    “I mean, we already got Donnie involved, now we got her—”
    “Plus wherever the fuck Merle Zane is.”
    “You heard back from him yet?”
    “Not a peep,” said Coker. “Phone just rings three times and goes to his voice mail.”
    “Any sign of him?”
    “Nope.”
    “You try getting a fix on where his phone is?”
    “Haven’t had the time. You?”
    “Me neither. You figure he’s still laying in the tall grass, waiting to make a move?”
    “Or he’s laying in the tall grass stone