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Perrine—just keeping it going, like one of the pod people. Like they said in that old movie, life was so much simpler that way. Yesterday, he’d shown up at the Terrell site, taken a nail apron away from one of his workers, launched into two hours of frenzied hammering, nailing partitions together until his arm seized up with cramps. He’d dropped the hammer, clutched his arm, looked up to find the whole framing crew watching him, concern etched on their faces.
El jefe es loco
, that was the consensus he drew from their expressions, and they were probably right. Maybe not crazy, but crazed, sure enough.
    When the door had risen high enough, Emilio ducked under the frame and flipped a light switch on the wall inside. A couple of banks of fluorescent tubes flickered to life, and Deal, who thought he’d become impervious, felt his stomach lurch. There, gleaming in gunmetal flake under the bluish-white lights, crouched like some dream out of the distant past, sat the Hog. As impossible, as real, as terrible in its dumbness as the Sphinx itself.
    “It’s the very same car, my man. I hauled it out of the impound yard myself.”
    Emilio clapped him on the shoulder, his eyes pinpoints, his grin manic. “I been spending nights and weekends on this since I don’t know how long.”
    Deal knew Emilio was waiting for him to say something, but it didn’t seem possible. Where to begin? Just a car, on the one hand, that’s what he was staring at. An ’83 Seville, its rear seat and trunk chopped away, the whole thing transformed by Cal Saltz, his long-dead friend and car junkie, into a gentleman’s pickup, an El Camino of a higher order. The last time Deal had seen it, a police wrecker was winching it up from a full-fathom-five parking spot at the bottom of Biscayne Bay. It had nearly cost Janice her life, and his as well.
    “My cousin did the mechanic work,” Emilio said. “He’s been through it top to bottom. Also, we dropped a ’67 V-8 in there, runs like a sonofabitch without all that emissions crap.”
    Deal glanced up at the sign above the bays, still speechless: “ EMILIO AND RODRIGUEZ, FINE COACHWORK ,” the sign read. Four years before, it had been “ EMILIO AND SON, FINE CABINET-WORK ”: Emilio’s father and Emilio, who’d built kitchens and bathrooms and dens full of bookshelves for DealCo, for Deal and Deal’s father before him.
    Then, after the hurricane, with Emilio Sr. retired, had come “ EMILIO AND RODRIGUEZ, BACKHOE SERVICE ”: Emilio and his cousin with the big machine, down from Tampa to work four hundred days straight, big money, clearing deadfall and debris from shattered homes. Now, with that work long gone, the pair were in the body shop business. If he lived long enough, Deal thought, maybe he’d see the two cousins in advertising, or maybe banking: “ EMILIO AND RODRIGUEZ, FINE SAVINGS & LOANS .”
    “What are you going to do with it?” Deal managed finally. He felt the silent chirring of the phone pager in his pocket, but ignored it.
    Emilio stared at him, an odd expression on his face. “Do?” He turned and swept his hand at the car again. “I’m
giving
it to you. This is my gift to you, man, make up for that fuckup on the Terrell job.” Deal nodded. Emilio was referring to the cabinets that had never been delivered, one last job, a favor to Deal, forgotten when the body work beckoned.
    Rodriguez had come out of an adjoining bay, paint mask pushed down around his neck, wiping his hands on a cloth. He came to stand beside Emilio, and though he was not smiling, Deal knew Rodriguez was just as eager to see his reaction. Emilio tall and lean, with his boyish good looks and grin that made it hard to be angry with him, no matter what the screwup—and there had been many; and Rodriguez, short and stocky, a bushy handlebar mustachio and a bandit’s tough stare—both of them with the coppery skin and high cheekbones of the Indios. Deal felt a wave of affection sweep over him, and for a