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and you’ll be able to go back home.”
    “A motel’s no place for a—”
    “Janine’s not going to be with you, Brenda. You leave her with
    the Welfare.”
    “But she’ll end up
    in—”
    “Wherever she ends up, it’ll be better
    than being with you.”
    Brenda started crying. “You
    don’t understand, Tim,” she said. “You’re not a
    woman.”
    “Neither are you,” Tim said.
    W e
    were at the kitchen table later that night, when Tim said, “We’ve
    got a job, Eddie.”
    “Okay.”
    “Thing
    is, there’s no shares this time. There won’t be any money. So
    we’ll just pay you cash, like we hired you, fair enough?”
    “Sure,” I said. I got up and walked outside. Quick, before
    anything showed on my face.
    I was out there a long time. I never
    felt so sad in my whole life.
    I heard them come up behind me. I
    didn’t turn around.
    “You want some sausage?” Virgil
    said. He knows it’s my favorite.
    “No thanks,” I
    said.
    “I don’t blame him,” Tim said.
    “Who’d want to eat a meal with a pair of stupid assholes like
    us?”
    I didn’t say anything. I knew my voice would shake if
    I did.
    Both of them came around so they were facing me.
    “We apologize, Eddie,” Virgil said. “We never meant to
    insult you.”
    “It’s okay,” I said.
    “No, it isn’t,” Virgil said. “We never should have
    offered you money. We should have just asked if you’d drive
    us.”
    I didn’t want to talk. I felt like crying, only I was
    too sad.
    “No, that’s not right,” Tim said.
    “Eddie, we shouldn’t have
asked
you at all.”
    I looked right in his eyes.
    “You’re with us,” Tim
    said. “We’re with you. Blood is bullshit. Brenda’s not our
    kin, Eddie. You are.”
    Right then was the best moment I ever spent
    on earth.
    I stayed the next few days at the house. We all worked on
    our piece of what we had to do.
    “Janine’s with the
    Welfare,” Tim said, when he got off the phone. “Nobody knows where
    Brenda is.”
    “They pick up Wallace?” Virgil asked.
    “No. And they’re not going to.”
    “How
    come?” I said. “Once that little girl tells who—”
    “Janine’s not
going
to tell,” Tim said.
    “Why not?”
    “We made a pact,” Tim said.
    “A blood pact, between kin. If she told, you know what would
    happen?”
    “Wallace would go to prison?”
    “Maybe. And even if he did, it’d be only for a couple of years.
    What’s that?”
    “He has to be worried, though,”
    Virgil said. “Wondering if the hammer is going to drop.”
    “He’s not worried about the law,” Tim said.
    “He’s worried about us.”
    “He doesn’t
    know—”
    “Sure, he knows, little brother. You think
    that whore Brenda wasn’t on the phone to him first thing? Hell,
    she’s probably with him right now. It’s for damn sure Wallace
    hasn’t been sleeping at their place. He’s not going to give us a
    chance to catch him alone. Specially not after dark.”
    T im had
    a plan. We gave it a couple of weeks, then we went out to do the job.
    “That’s him,” Tim said. “The fat fuck in the brown
    jacket. But there’s a lot of traffic.…”
    “It’s all right,” I told him, as we drove past the
    poolroom on the other side of the street.
    The poolroom was one of those
    places where you could make a bet, or shoot dice, or buy different kinds of
    things. Out front, they had some benches, and a bunch of little tables and
    chairs. People played dominos and cribbage out there, or they could eat one of
    the sandwiches they sold inside the place. They did a lot of business.
    I made another pass, then I double-backed and came at it from
    downwind.
    Wallace was out front, at one of the tables, having a beer
    with a couple of other guys. It wasn’t luck that we found him. Tim said
    he was there regular—he spent most of his days at the poolroom, either
    inside or out.
    Virgil was in the backseat, with the window down. He had
    a canvas sack filled with sand draped over the sill,