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guy, and you just took the best one.”
    “That was the
best—
”
    “You know, you talk too much. Me, I like what Sam Goldwyn said. You know what Sam Goldwyn said?”
    “He said, Don’t say—”
    “He said to a bunch of yes-men, ‘Don’t say yes until I finish talking.’ I like that.”
    “It’s hard to know when you’re finished. Sometimes you stop for—”
    “I gotta breathe. Tell you what, when I’m finished I’ll say ‘your turn.’ Okay?”
    I didn’t reply. Wattles pushed down the lid of the laptop and glared at me. “Okay?”
    “You didn’t say ‘your turn’.”
    I got an index finger pointed at the bridge of my nose, and Wattles got another pint of blood to the head, if the color of his face was any indication. “Don’t dick around with me. I’m the only thing between you and them dogs. Rabbits gives guys to the dogs sometimes, you know? Don’t answer. So you took the better half of Bunny’s prenup, and she’s going to be
pissed
. And when Bunny gets pissed, Rabbits loses it. Even after two years,he loses it. I don’t know what she does, but she’s gotta do it good. He’s not ordering Cinderella or the Wicked Queen to get delivered any more, not even once, and he still gets all chesty when somebody even looks at her wrong. Oh, and you don’t know the best part.”
    I waited, and Wattles said, “Your turn.”
    “What’s the best—”
    “Where the video footage from that surveillance camera is stored,” he said.

I looked over at Wattles, who had reopened the screen on his laptop and was glaring at it like it had stuck its tongue out at him. “Did Janice know about the cameras? Did she know—”
    “Nah,” Wattles said. He lifted an edge of the computer and dropped it again, as if that would improve whatever was on the display. “She didn’t know nothing. She wouldn’t of played if she had. She thinks hummingbirds nest in your butt.”
    “She hides her feelings well.”
    “Why do you think she chose you?” He gave me the glare I was coming to recognize as his normal expression. “There’s a lot of guys. I tell her I need the smartest, and she says, ‘Gotta be Junior.’ I’m telling you, you’re halfway home. Buy some flowers, get a haircut, you’re there.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said.
    “What?” He was back to the computer, and he didn’t sound very interested.
    “Why did you want smart? If you’re going to hose somebody, why do you need him to be smart? Seems to me you’d want the dumbest—”
    “You’ll find out,” Wattles said. His head came up, and the movement set the two lower chins wobbling. “What’re you doing, Lyle? Waiting for the fuckin’ film to develop?”
    “He’s what?” I asked, thumbing at Hacker. “Your pet policeman?”
    Hacker flexed his suit at me. “I got two words for you. Three strikes.”
    “I don’t have any strikes.” In California, the three-strike law means geological time for a third felony conviction.
    “You have any idea how many open burglaries I’ve got?” Hacker said. “How’d you like to be the way I close two of them? And this one on top of it? Can you count that high?”
    “Lyle,” Wattles said. “Bite one.”
    “Sorry,” Hacker said.
    “Show the man,” Wattles said.
    “What?” I asked. “What are you showing me?”
    “Rabbits is smart,” Wattles said. “Got great tech, you know? We live in the age of tech, tech’s what keeps the world safe from people like us. Unless we can use tech ourselves, like me. Old cocker like me, tech don’t come natural, but I learned about it ’cause I had to, and there
you
are, a lot younger than me and sitting on that shitty couch because you don’t know your tech. You shoulda spotted those pinhole cameras in a minute, but no. Walk in big as life with your face showing and everything. Rabbits got himself the best. That was cute, what you did with the foam, but not cute enough ’cause the camera got your face anyway and the video’s stored