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acre of yellow teeth. “Believe me, asshole, you’re done,” he assured me, and reached out to clamp a big hand on my shoulder. It never arrived.
    I put everything I had behind a short, straight right to the middle of his solar plexus. He whooped out a great rush of air, staggered backwards two steps, and dropped onto the filthy carpet, barking for breath, trying to force air into his spasming lungs. I’ve been on the other end. It’s not a pleasant experience.
    I turned back to the desk clerk. He had his right hand under the counter.
    “I wouldn’t,” I cautioned.
    Took him all of a second to decide I was right. Behind me, the big guy was rolling back and forth on the floor, making noises like a broken bilge pump. Wifebeater threw a disgusted glance at his disabled musclehead, then looked down at the photo and nodded. I watched as he fingered his way through an old-fashioned card file, extracted one, and slid it across the desk to me.
    “You’re sure,” I pushed. “ Cause if this turns out to be bullshit, you’re going to be seeing me again.”
    He nodded so hard the toupee slipped. He pushed it back into place.
    “Last Tuesday and Wednesday nights,” he said. “Paid cash.”
    I pocketed the card. Dropped the key on the counter. “That yours?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “Nice doing business with you,” I lied, as I turned and headed for the street.
    With lowlifes like those two, you never know, so I kept an eye on my back as I dodged traffic across Jackson Street. Satisfied my wake was clear, I leaned against a store window and gazed down at the card in my hand. Scrawled on the card was a name. Gordon Stanley. Two nights. Twelve bucks a night, plus tax.
    Somewhere in my mind, a rocket rose in the night sky. “Gordon Stanley,” I whispered to myself. “Who in hell is Gor—” And then the rocket exploded, filling the darkness with brilliant streams of multicolored light. I pulled the photo from my pocket. My eyes crawled over it like ants at a picnic.
    “Gordy,” I whispered. “Holy shit. It’s Gordy.”

     
    Rachel kept running her palm over the photograph, rubbing the shiny surface as if her hands could somehow smooth the deep lines etched in his face.
    “What happened to him?” she whispered.
    “I think we both know what happened to him.”
    Her eyes were going damp. “But . . . I mean, like, there was nothing we could . . .” She stopped. Looked up at me again. “You think we should have . . . ?”
    I didn’t say anything. We were wandering into one of those moral minefields, where people are forced to recognize that the veneer of civilization is purely illusionary. A set of undefined agreements, the vagueness of which allows us to blame an unjust God, or bad luck, or anyone or anything but ourselves for the ofttimes predictable misfortunes of others. I remembered a line from a song. Said that people don’t do what they believe in, they just do what’s most convenient, and then repent. Break out the scourges.
    Year and a half back. A glorious spring. The kind of weather you only get every six or seven years here in the Pacific Northwest. Temperature twenty degrees above the norm. Seventy-five in April. Rachel and I camped out at the Landry manse for the first time, all touches and looks, soaking naked in the spa, mooning over one another, lost in the heady fumes of carnal expectation.
    As the days kept getting warmer, it was like some homing signal was being broadcast to the houses lining the north edge of the bay. One by one, residents and renters alike began to emerge from their winter hibernation, shielding their sleepy eyes from the fiery glint on the water, rummaging for charcoal briquettes in the garage.
    That’s when the party started. I don’t recall who first invited everybody over for a barbecue and a few drinks, but that’s how it began. T-bones and tequila on the terrace. Then somebody decided to return the favor. Then somebody else made crab cakes for