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was facing the house the dog had run to.
    Up until this point, I’d avoided tripping the lights, but now they came on with the intensity of klieg lights at a Hollywood premiere. Motionless, I peered between a couple of big leaves to see an old dude with fierce eyebrows and a nose like an eagle’s beak step onto his front porch. He wore a shapeless white T-shirt and a pair of gray gym shorts and had something black and hard looking in his hand, and my stomach muscles did a little tango step at the sight of it. He glared in my direction and shouted, “You!” Then he pointed the black thing toward me.
    I said, “Uhhhh,” and a couple of the many-legged things that live in ivy dropped down the back of my shirt and started trying to dig their way into my skin. The sheer shock of it choked off my reply, which was a good thing, because from above me and to my right a familiar voice said, “What, you old fart?”
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing up there?” Eagle Beak said.
    â€œI’m looking at my wall. Whaddaya think I’m doing?”
    â€œI think you’re shining your fucking flashlight through my windows, is what I think you’re doing, trying to get a look at Lizzie in her nightie and making my dog bark in the goddamn middle of the night.”
    â€œI got a burglar,” the Slugger said, “and he’s in your yard.”
    â€œYeah?” Eagle Beak called back into the house, “Moron thinks we’ve got a burglar in our yard.” To the Slugger, he said, “You see any burglars down here? Jeezus peezus, burglars . Any burglars in this neighborhood, they’d be waiting in line for your autograph. Now, get offa that wall.”
    â€œIt’s my wall.”
    â€œLike fuck it is. Seven inches of it is on my property, and that’s the seven inches you’re hanging your big fat face over right now. And I’m tired of looking at it.” He raised the dark cylinder, and a supernova of hard white light erupted from the end that was pointed at the Slugger.
    Above me the ivy shivered and trembled, and the Slugger said, “You blinded me, you old clown!”
    â€œShine lights in my window, will you?” Eagle Beak shouted. He wiggled the black cylinder, which I recognized belatedly as a Streamlight UltraStinger 1100, the agonizingly brilliant flashlight favored by cops in dicey areas all over the country. “Here, take a good look at this.” He made tiny circles with the Streamlight, and I heard a scrape of metal followed by a much longer scrape of metal, then a despairing scream cut short by a heartfelt yelp and a really rewarding compound sound, half the clatter of aluminum and half the dull thud of human muscle, both striking the unforgiving surface of flagstone.
    â€œAnd stay down there!” Eagle Beak shouted. “Asshole!” He stepped back and slammed his door.
    If it hadn’t been for the whimpering from the other side of the wall, the night would have been blessedly silent. On the other hand, the whimpering had a kind of plaintive musical quality, a descending arc of tones in a minor key, lovely if heard from the right perspective. If it had had a beat, I might have danced to it.
    â€œI still can’t see.” It was the Slugger’s voice, just barely not sobbing, and that was the cue I needed. I clawed back up the ivy until I was about halfway to the top and then headed right. When I got to Eagle Beak’s gate, which was about three feet shorter than the wall, I climbed up onto it, stepped over, and then ivy-rappelled down to the sidewalk and took off up the street, away from the Slugger’s collapsed gate. Turning the corner, I yanked my shirt away from me and shook off my passengers, one of which bit me by way of goodbye, and pulled out the phone, which was vibrating again, or possibly still. I put it to my ear, and Ronnie said, “Come uphill to Tigertail and turn south. I’m in your