'That was fucking-A great,' Baby Fat agreed, 'especially when you peed yourself.'
'Hey, it got their attention, didn't it?' the kid asked with a grin.
Baby Fat sniffed as he waved a hand in front of his nose. 'It's getting mine now.'
'Screw you,' the kid laughed, and he and Baby Fat traded high fives while Pedro stared in amazement. Then the kid walked over to the wounded black man, who was moaning in pain. The preppie grinned.
'Golly, I bet that hurts.'
'Fuck you,' the wounded man managed.
'Frankly, sir, I don't think you could get it up in your condition.'
Baby Fat laughed.
'Finish him,' the Light Heavy said, his voice tight. 'We gotta get out of here.'
'Be cool,' the kid said as he circled his prey, pointing his gun at various parts of the man's anatomy while chanting, 'Eeny meeny miny mo.'
'Stop being a jerk,' the Light Heavy told him.
'Gosh, you're no fun,' the kid answered as he blew out the wounded man's kneecap, eliciting a hideous scream.
The kid laughed. 'You can really hit those high notes.' Then the smile left his lips and he looked the screaming man in the eyes. 'Were you in your high school glee club, asshole?'
'Oh, for Christ's sake,' the Light Heavy said, emptying two shots into the screaming man's head. 'Now cut the shit and let's move.'
Pedro tried to contain his fear. If he was going to die, he wanted to die like a man.
The Light Heavy turned to him. 'Grab your dope.'
Pedro wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.
'We gotta go. The cops will be here any minute.'
They weren't going to kill him! Pedro's legs suddenly worked. He ran to the back room. Benny lay sprawled on the floor, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. His bodyguard lay crumpled in a corner. Pedro tore his eyes away and stuffed his stash into a suitcase, then headed back to the front room.
'The goodies!' Baby Fat shouted.
'We got your money,' the kid told Pedro. 'We can still do this.'
Pedro hesitated, confused.
'You owe us, amigo,' Baby Fat told him. 'You'd be dead if we weren't so fucking lethal.'
Pedro stared at the Jaguar outside. 'I don't know, man. You're gonna be hot. The cops will trace your car.'
The preppies looked at each other and broke out laughing.
'Not to worry, bro,' the kid assured him. 'It's stolen.'
Pedro thought he was beyond surprise, but these guys were from outer space. Then Baby Fat wrapped an arm around Pedro's shoulders. One look at his face told Pedro that everything that had happened here and at The Penthouse had been an act. He was suddenly more frightened than he'd been when he was facing certain death.
'We could kill you and steal your drugs,' the fat boy told him in a quiet and confident tone, 'but that would be short-sighted. What we want is a mutually beneficial partnership that will make us all a lot of money.'
The kid shrugged. 'If you're not interested, take off and Godspeed.'
'What do you say, Pedro?' the Light Heavy asked. 'Do you want to make some money?'
Pedro thought about the woman in his dream and the clean white beach.
'Let's go someplace and talk,' he said.
Part One
Chapter One.
United States Senator Chester Whipple, Republican from South Carolina, a staunch soldier of God, did not drink, a fact he regretted as he paced back and forth across the front room of his Georgetown town house. It was two in the morning; his investigator, Jerry Freemont, was three hours late, and prayer alone was not calming his nerves.
The doorbell rang. Whipple rushed into the foyer, but he did not find his investigator standing on his front stoop when he opened the door. Instead, an elegantly dressed man, wearing an old school tie from Whipple's alma mater, smiled at him. The senator's visitor was of medium build and height. He wore his sandy hair slicked down; wire-rimmed glasses perched on a Roman nose. Whipple, a scholarship boy from a rural public school, disliked most
