Niceville

squalid story to her father, Morgan Littlebasket. Chief of their clan, a highly respected Niceville resident, and a man who was seen by all as a figure of adamantine integrity. Daddy would know what to do about Donny Falcone.
    But Daddy, otherwise a kindly old man, was also puritanically austere in matters touching upon sexuality. His manner around Twyla and her older sister, Bluebell, had, during their teenage years, grown ever more frigidly distant and had verged on grimly disapproving as their bodies had blossomed into ripe young womanhood.
    The fact that she had so befouled herself—and her clan—by accepting a bribe from a criminally deviant Italian dentist was a moral failure he might eventually forgive but he would never forget.
    So Twyla, faltering in her resolve, ended up going with the only other independent and strong male connection she had, namely Coker, who was her part-time lover.
    Coker elected to try the Donny Falcone case in Coker’s Court of No Appeal, where Donny Falcone was duly pronounced Guilty as Sin and sentenced to pay a hefty monthly fine, in cash, to an account Coker had established in a galaxy far, far away, the proceeds of which Coker felt it only right to share with Twyla Littlebasket. Having some extortionate leverage on a perverted Sicilian dentist may not seem, at first glance, all that useful, but it had just saved Charlie Danziger’s life.
    Coker stubbed out his cigarette in the ceramic spit-up thingie next to the dentist chair and leaned down into Danziger’s face, breathing cigarette fumes and something minty-zesty fresh all over Danziger’s face.
    “I see the
proceeds
aren’t in your fucking car, Charlie. Can you enlighten me as regards to this unhappy eventuation?”
    “There’s no such word as ‘eventuation,’ you ignorant cracker. And yes, they are not in the car because you damn well know why. You’d have done the same, you were in my position.”
    Coker pulled back out of Danziger’s face and lit up another Camel, offering one to Danziger and lighting it up for him with a gold Zippo bearing a worn-down crest of the United States Marine Corps.
    Danziger sucked in the smoke, winced a bit at the pain in his side, glancing down at the sewn-up incision in his chest with quiet satisfaction and then back up at Coker, whose craggy hard-bitten face wreathedin cigarette smoke was making him look like Clint Eastwood’s ugly older brother.
    Coker breathed the smoke out through his nostrils, the two plumes drifting into the downlight from the halogen lamp.
    “Yeah,” he said, flashing a wolfish grin, “I guess I woulda. I gotta say I’m also a tad pissed at you for not dealing with Merle.”
    Danziger winced at the recollection and shook his head sadly.
    “He’s a nimble little fucker, I’ll give him that. Flitted into the undergrowth like some kind of magical pixie and disappeared. Got any suggestions?”
    Coker sighed, looked down at his cigarette, twirled it between his index finger and his thumb like a tiny baton—a signature trick he had—and flicked it back into his mouth.
    “Way I see it, he’s either dead in the woods or he got himself doctored up and now he’s laying back in the tall grass getting ready to even things up. We can’t afford to just hope for him being dead. The guys who showed up at the barn fire said they saw some blood at the edge of the forest, but the dogs got nothing after a few yards. So I’m thinking he’s still out there.”
    “You’re a gun-hand, Coker. Saddle up and go git him.”
    Coker shook his head.
    “That’s not going to fly now. I can’t be loping about the woodlands yelling,
‘Come out come out dear Merle come out come out wherever you are’
and firing randomly into the undergrowth. Only thing we can do is reopen negotiations.”
    “Yeah? How we planning to do that?”
    Coker held up his cell phone.
    “I—or maybe you—are going to call him up on his cell, ask for a meet. If he agrees, and we can manage it, we kill him. If we can’t, then we piece him off fair and square. He’s got as much skin in this cluster-fuck as we do.”
    Danziger pretended to think this over. What he was actually thinking was that being friends with Coker was kind of like having a python as a pet. You had to keep him well fed and amused all the time, and it would never do to let him think you were nervous around him. About Merle Zane, what Coker was suggesting was pretty much what Danziger had already decided was the only