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to hitting his joint.
    Serge suddenly jumped up. “I have to get the hell out of here.”
    “I thought you were behind deadline.”
    “I am. But I’ve been in the same place too long. I can’t breathe—the walls…” He grabbed a suitcase. “Besides, the police are looking for us. The room’s gotten too hot.”
    Serge was cramming socks in his luggage when he heard a liquid trickling sound on the carpet. He turned around. “Coleman! What the fuck are you doing?”
    “Peeing on my feet. Like you said.”
    “In the shower!”
    “Ohhhh,” said Coleman, nodding. “That makes a lot more sense. I was beginning to wonder because usually your ideas are pretty good.”
    Serge threw up his arms in exasperation, then unplugged his DVD player. A regular broadcast came on the set. Local news. A reporter stood in front of an upscale ranch house swarming with detectives.
“Police are still investigating yesterday’s apparent abduction of a nursing home mogul from his driveway in this exclusive north Tampa enclave. Shocked neighbors said they saw nothing but heard tires squeal just after dawn…”
    The camera zoomed in on a set of dropped car keys with an evidence flag next to a late-model Escalade.
“Authorities have no leads. However, the victim was recently in the news in an unrelated matter after evicting dozens of Medicare residents to make way for more profitable private payers. Despite numerous complaints against the owner, state regulators said the facility complied with all current law and their hands were tied…”
    Loud banging from the closet again.
    Serge glanced in the direction of the noise. “What’s his fucking problem?”
    “Maybe his arm’s asleep.”
    Serge went over to the closet. He opened the door. A man lay tied up on the floor. His mouth had been duct-taped shut, blood trickling from his nostrils. Serge reached in his pocket and pulled out a Polaroid photo. The picture was of the same man lying in the same closet with tape across his mouth. Written on the bottom of the photo:
Dodd.
    Serge leaned down and tore the tape off the man’s mouth. “Who did this to you?”
    The man looked baffled. “Uh…you did.”
    Serge pressed the tape back on the hostage’s mouth and closed the door.
    “Serge,” said Coleman. “Don’t you remember doing that? It was just the other morning. We jumped him in his driveway. Then you took that photo after shoving him in the closet…And you’ve been pistol-whipping him for two days.”
    “Oh, I didn’t forget,” said Serge. “I was doing a scene from the movie
Memento.
One of my all-time favorites!”
    “I saw that one,” said Coleman. “But I could never figure out what was going on. Kept jumping around in time.”
    “Which is why it was such a pleasant surprise,” said Serge. “I usually hate it when some show-off wrecks a perfectly good linear story by jumbling the chronology.”
    Coleman looked toward the closet door. “So what’s the plan? Robbery? Ransom?”
    “Punishment,” said Serge. “Hand me my tools…”
     
ZANESVILLE , OHIO
     
    Two men in dark suits and thin, dark ties rummaged through garbage bags on the porch of a two-story brick duplex. Their matching fedoras made similarities in height and weight seem closer.
    “Wonder where they went to,” said the man on the left. He reached in one of the sacks and pulled out a shower caddy with suction cups.
    “Anywhere,” said the other, studying a clock radio in the shape of a football. “Who would have thought they’d come here?”
    A group of kids in down vests rode by on bikes. One wore the orange sash of a school crossing guard. The unit on the other side of the duplex had an American flag in a brass holder and a dead wreath on the door.
    “They did it in reverse,” said the first man, tossing aside a liberated ant farm. “People from Ohio usually flee to Florida. Think they might head back?”
    “Doubt it.”
    The door on the other side of the duplex opened, but the