Mortachai drops the phone receiver into its carriage and walks back to the bar, watching the muzzle of Dibbs's gun. The bartender, still standing by the cash register, arms folded.

"Well, what did he say?"

"He's on his way over," says Mortachai.

A nervous jerk of the gun, pointing Mortachai back to the barstool.

"Is he coming alone?" says Dibbs.

"I don't know."

"You should've told him to come alone."

"Didn't the Lord bless you with a brain, Dibbs? If I specifically told him to come alone, don't you think he'd imagine there was more stewing in the pot than peas and a couple of carrots?"

"All right, fine, how long will it take him?"

"Only a few blocks away."

Dibbs taps knuckles of a fist on a pant knee. "Okay, this is how we play it. You be sure to act like we're just conducting some business, that goes double for you, Mr. Bartender, you go about your duties, just make sure I can see your hands." Bartender nods. Dibbs puts the gun in the cavity of one his coat pockets, the muzzle forming a peak in the fabric. "I'll wait like this. He won't see the gun but it's ready to go. If he's got somebody with him, you introduce me, tell him the three of us are going to work on a real candy deal, only it's a private matter and his friend has to wait outside. If he's alone, no problem, just call him over."

"Sure, Dibbs, of course if my performance lacks conviction I suppose I'm going down too, right?"

"It doesn't have to be that way, you know? You and me, we pulled off some lucrative-ass deals. We had some trust and loyalty going between us."

"Oh, yeah, Dibbs, we were waltzing trust and stepping the loyalty tango. Now you come in here telling me to tap dance at gunpoint."

"I don't have any options left, Mortachai. I have to protect my interests. I'm persona non grata in Aliento because every single person I counted on left me for the wolves. You know what that's like, finding out how little another man's word is worth? It's like not knowing whether or not the ground is going to be there when you take a step forward. And it makes you hungry to count on someone again. I want you to be that one, I honestly do. The way I see it, when our target arrives you'll have three choices. You can remain neutral, let me do my duty and get out of here. Or you can try your best to subvert my plans. That one makes no sense to me, not only because of this gun but because this guy can't possibly mean that much to you. Or, you can help me out the best you can, and when the killing's done you can call Levek up and convince him that I just eliminated the biggest business risk to Boggs's organization. You know that, Levek knows it by now, and Boggs certainly knows it. Come on, Mortachai, admit it, if Boggs gave me a job I could do a lot more for him than some punk kid. I'm a soldier, I'm bred for duty." He leans back in the stool. "He'll be here soon. You just think about all that."

Marie, when she's getting up from the table, and I'm up, shaking the table, table legs hard as rivets on the floor, the bottle stepping to the edge. "Horace, it's over." That bottle falls doesn't break spills its little pool. "I need more than that, Marie, damn it." The bottle falls and she yelps and jumps back away from me. "Something I never told you Horace, kept it inside for five fucking years. The first time we made love you remember I went out on your balcony for a cigarette, but I peeked back in the window for a moment, because I wanted to sneak a look at that new lover of mine, the big man of a lover, and you know what I saw, don't you? You were lying there jacking off, stroking yourself into a frenzy. You never knew I saw you." Marie gets up all clumsy, her knee hits the chair. I want to get up, I want to grab her. "I saw you, Horace, you scum." I want to hit her, the table shaking. "You didn't see nothing, Private, do you hear me? Don't think for a minute that I'm not allowed to kick your flabby ass, Shifty." Just one deal, just another deal. "What do you say, Captain?" "What do you say, Private?" Just one precious minute sooner and the guns would still be here. It's starting now, again, everything coming apart, everything that should've been just gone away. "I don't know, Sergeant, I feel really strange about this." "Don't give me that shit, just drive, we have a deal to finish off." And the long ride back, that town of possibilities left behind, the whole time, "I want out, Sergeant, it's over for me." Somebody out of nowhere, someone who shouldn't be there, "If you got a wife and kids or some kind of life,

you ought to go back to it now." "Let's finish it, let's finish it." Guns gone. Ammo gone. "Let's finish it." The Captain putting the gun in my hand. "You could do more than that, look what I did for you, just look." "It's over, Dibbs, the army's finished with you, and so am I." Holding the gun to me, me taking it because I don't know what else to do. "You can't let this happen to me, Captain, I'm a soldier, that's all I've ever been."

"I thought I would find you here." Dibbs lets the door close on its pneumatic rod behind him. No windows in the place, just strong lights over the bar and softer ones over the tables. Everything empty except for the bartender big-bellied in white jacket and Mortachai at the bar, gray-curled, short-bearded, fingers around a stemmed glass, red liquid, a cherry.

Mortachai smiles, lifts the glass, one gold tooth in a row of yellow. "Only real manhattan in town."

Dibbs in long overcoat and army boots, hair a clean quarter-inch showing the squarish shape of his skull. "Hi, Mortachai, good to see you." Hands in his pockets.

"It's the half-bent ser-geant himself, come and sit down, Dibbsy-man."

Dibbs takes the stool next to Mortachai, offers his left hand for a shake.

"It's been a long time, Mr. Romantic, there's been no war on as far as I heard, and I don't see you going for a good conduct medal, so you must've been chasing some action in other quarters."

"A little bit, sure."

"Okay, so tell me a story." Mortachai takes a long sip from his drink.

"I've got plenty of story for you." He pulls a .45 automatic from his right pocket.

Mortachai clutches the bar's edge, puts his feet on the floor, starting to get up. "Hey, hold on."

"No, just keep sitting Mortachai, everything's okay." He looks at the bartender, twitches the gun in the man's direction. "And you, stand over by the register where I can watch you."

Mortachai easing back into the stool. "Now Dibbs, I remember back about thirty seconds ago when we were good friends. What happened?"

"Nothing, we're still friends. Let's just say I'm trying to remove the conflict from any possible conflicts of interest. That is, if you're still working for Boggs."

"You know I am."

"Okay then. I'm going to tell you a story. You just sit and listen."

Mortachai nods. One hand on the bar. Cherry floating in his drink.

"You notice this is a .45, and if you were close enough you'd see the words 'U.S. Army' stamped on the barrel. Now that may not seem so odd to you, but actually there's quite a story about how this gun got in my hands. Back when I was one of your pipelines to Welburnt I got word of the man Shoh down in Grace who was willing to trade dope for guns. This caught my interest for a very specific reason. You see, a few years ago when the army phased in the Beretta 9mm, all the old .45s on my base were stockpiled in a back room of the armory and basically forgotten, only inventoried occasionally. So I got this idea that by the time those guns were missed, the deal would be long done and nobody could trace anything to me. I recruited an assistant for the job, a Private named Shifty who was intent on setting up a little nestegg for himself and his wife. He helped me get away with a load of the .45s plus some shotguns sitting around since the Vietnam days."

He smiles and shakes his head. "Everything was fine until we hit Aliento. Over by Juicy Lucy's some kids stole half my stock of .45s. Then when we got over to Shoh's area, we got a tip that the little man wasn't planning on letting us walk away from the deal. Shifty started acting out his nickname to a superlative degree and decided to get us out of there. When we got back to base he started going on about how he didn't want a part of it anymore. Sneaky bastard. He left me to do the clean-up work. And that's the real irony of the story. You see, they didn't nail me stealing the guns, they got me when I tried to return them. Damn stiff-necks brought me up on charges. And you know, I think if I had the full missing complement of arms on me I could've talked my way out of it. That's the first place those boys fucked me up.

"As it was, I didn't have much of a chance except for an officer friend of mine, Captain Melichek. He had some influence with the people in charge of my court martial, so in exchange for a little assistance I hooked him up with Levek for a prodigious powder deal. But it seems that Aliento has a particular effect on us soldiers, and the Captain was a much happier man before he made a trip here. When he came back he did enough to get me out of the brig but made sure I got discharged in a most dishonorable fashion. He told me he wanted me out of his sight. Traitorous son of a bitch. Making beaucoup bucks selling off in Welburnt while I got kicked out on my ass. I asked him what soured him on the game. He gave me this gun you see here. He said he encountered a couple of punks called the Jinx Boys, and this is where shit gets confusing. He said one named Nico was with Levek for the deal, but another one tried to take him down in the parking lot with this gun. So I did some arithmetic and two plus two adds up to the same kids who stole my guns tried to work Melichek over and pissed him off enough to come down hard on my ass. So that's two I owe the Jinx Boys. Now you start talking and fill in some of my blanks."

A long sigh from Mortachai before he begins talking. "The Jinx Boys used to be a bunch of street punks dancing with knives. But one day they showed up with guns and started looking dangerous. The sheep had to either be slaughtered or brought into the fold. Boggs took a chance and had them join the club. Things went smooth until the Melichek deal. Melichek called up Levek after the fact steaming about the setup. That was Mig, Nico's right-hand man who pulled the gun. He's no longer with us. Nico went to lengths to prove to Levek that Mig was acting on his own, but everything's changed now. Levek doesn't quite trust Nico anymore."

Dibbs is silent for a while. "So that's it, huh? Then Nico's the one I want."

"No Dibbs, that's premeditated suicide you're talking."

"Where can I find him?"

"They're usually at Pirate Bob's playing the wayward youth routine."

Dibbs looks at the bartender. "You got a phone?"

Bartender lifts one out from under the counter and places it on top.

Dibbs turns back to Mortachai. "Okay, I want you to call up Pirate Bob's. Talk to Nico, convince him you want him in on a play but you can't talk over the phone so he needs to get over here."

Mortachai glances at the phone but doesn't move. Dibbs shakes the gun. "You have to listen to me, I'm not joking. I got nothing left but my debts, and Nico's on the top of the list."

Clouds hanging dark gray bellies in the afternoon. Nico and Reggie on the sidewalk. Young in black jackets and dark hair. A wall painted with "HABANERA" in bright yellow over a woman frozen in dancing red ruffle skirt.

Nico stops at the door, pulls a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. "Hey, Reggie, go in and see what Mortachai wants. I'm gonna' smoke."

Reggie looks back down the street. "You had all this time to smoke."

Cigarette in his fingers. "I didn't want to smoke then, I want to smoke now. And I don't really like that Mortachai, he makes me nervous. Just go and see what he wants."

"Okay, whatever." Little flame flicked on. Reggie opens the door. Inside, the bartender is leaning back against the cash register wiping out a big beer mug with a towel. Mortachai with his back to the door, gray curls around his collar, turns and looks. Dibbs on the stool beside him, hands in his pockets.

Mortachai does not smile. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it again. Then: "There you are, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Dibbs."

Dibbs takes his left hand out of his pocket. "Hi, Nico."

"I'm not Nico."

The gun first opens a hole in Dibbs's coat. A dark hole with seared fabric edge emitting smoke in a thin trail. For the second shot Dibbs takes the gun out of his pocket

while the bartender is ducking his head below the bar
while Mortachai is staring at the blood
while Reggie is falling backwards into the wall

He stops for a moment just long enough to see the door open and Nico's drawn gun entering from the gray, but he fires the gun into Reggie's head

while Nico extends his gun in both hands
while Reggie's body lurches down the wall into a heap on the floor

Nico follows the struggle of Dibbs's figure with his gun. His is a mask that only blinks in reaction to each shot he fires.

Mortachai is getting up off the stool. Nico stops him with the pointed gun. "What is this about, Mortachai?"

Mortachai bends down and looks at Dibbs's face. Eyes a deep green, open. Blood beginning to seep through the holes in the coat. "It's about loyalty, Nico."

The bartender stands up straight, watches Nico wrest the gun by the barrel from Dibbs's hand. He takes Mortachai's glass and tosses the last bit of red and the cherry into the sink.