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something, are you?”
    “Race-car drivers don’t faint. We’re manly men. I’m pretty close to blowing chow, though. Manly men are allowed to do that.”
    “Maybe you should sit down.”
    “That sounds like a good idea, but I’m too freaked to move. And here’s more bad news. Do you know who this is?”
    “No. Do you?”
    “The plastic wrap has his face sort of distorted, but I think this is Oscar Huevo.”
    I clapped my hands over my ears. “I didn’t hear that.”
    Gobbles wandered in. “Holy fuck,” Gobbles said. “That looks like Oscar Huevo.
Holy fucking fuck
.”
    “Someone has to get me out of here,” I said. “I’m going to be sick.”
    Hooker gave me a shove, and we all rushed out and stood gulping air in the middle of the warehouse. Gobbles had started shivering. He was shivering so much I could hear his teeth chattering.
    “This is b-b-bad,” he said.
    Hooker and I nodded agreement. It was bad.
    “Who would want to kill Oscar Huevo?” I asked Hooker.
    “The list is probably in the tens of thousands. He was a brilliant businessman, but I’m told he was a ruthless competitor. He had a lot of enemies,” Hooker said.
    “We need to call the police.”
    “Darlin’, we’re standing in front of a hauler we just hijacked and vandalized. And the dead guy on the floor owns the car that just beat me out of the championship. And if that isn’t bad enough, two Stiller employees are involved in some really bad shit.”
    “Do you think Oscar Huevo is the billion-dollar cargo that was going to Mexico?”
    “I think it’s a good possibility.”
    We fell silent for a couple minutes, all of us absorbing the extent of the disaster.
    “I got the icky c-c-creepy c-c-crawlies,” Gobbles said. “M-m-maybe we could just p-p-put Oscar back in the l-l-locker.”

THREE
    A car door slammed outside the warehouse and Hooker, Gobbles, and I went rigid. A beat later the lock tumbled on the side door and Felicia Ibarra and her pal Rosa Florez walked in. Rosa works in one of the cigar factories on Fifteenth Street. She’s in her forties. She’s half a head shorter than me and twenty pounds heavier. And while I like to think of myself as having an okay shape, I’m built like a boy compared with Rosa.
    Beans gave a happy
woof
and took off at a gallop, chugging across the room like a freight train. He skidded to a stop in front of Felicia, put his two front paws on her chest, and she went down to the floor with Beans on top of her.
    Hooker gave a whistle, pulled a dog biscuit out of his pocket, and tossed it across the room. Beans’s head snapped around, his eyes opened wide, and he abandoned Felicia like she was yesterday’s news, thundering off in search of the biscuit.
    “He likes you,” Hooker said to Felicia, helping her get to her feet.
    “Lucky me,” Felicia said. “It’s a dog, right?”
    Rosa hugged Hooker and me. “We just came to say hello. We never see you anymore.” She looked over Hooker’s shoulder and went wide-eyed at the hauler. “Omigod, this is one of those NASCAR trucks, isn’t it? It’s the thing the car goes in. How does it work? Where do you put the car?”
    “The car goes in the top,” I told her. “The ramp is on hydraulics. It lifts the car and the car gets rolled into the bay on the top.”
    “And who’s this?” she said, eyeing Gobbles.
    “This is Gobbles. He also works for Stiller Racing.”
    “Ladies,” Gobbles said, bobbing his head.
    “Are you a driver?” Rosa wanted to know.
    “No, ma’am,” Gobbles said. “I’m a spotter like Barney. And during the week I do some detailing.”
    Felicia swept past me to the hauler. “What’s in the downstairs? I always wanted to see this. I just want to look in the door,” she said. “Just take a little peek.”
    “No!” Hooker and I said in unison, blocking the way.
    Rosa tried to see around Hooker. “Does this truck have one of those lounges with black leather couches where all the drivers have