“It’s cool,” I said. “It’s cool. Let’s just drink. This is Rolande’s last party. He wouldn’t want us fighting.”

I reached across the table and filled everyone’s glass to the rim. JoJo looked away from Oz, over at Randy still grinning like a fool, and then over at sobbing Sun.

JoJo shook his head. “Goddamn, no wonder he wanted to leave this world. Look at y’all. Like a fuckin’ freak show in here.”

“I know a man who can drive a railroad spike through his nose,” I announced. “You want me to call him?”

“I know a man in Algiers who’ll bring back your friend for fifty bucks,” Oz said with pursed lips. “But then Rolando would be a zombie and kind of a grumpy pain in the ass. You know how zombies get.”

“Nick!” JoJo yelled.

Rolande’s head rolled over to JoJo’s shoulder, mouth agape.

The music stopped. And no one said a word as a brittle wind blew down Conti Street. I could only hear Sun’s heavy breathing and a rock band jamming at the new Irish pub a few doors down.

Suddenly, the back door burst open and Randy dropped his glass on the hardwood floor. The glass scattered in shards dripping with amber whiskey.

And even my heart skipped for a second until I saw it was Loretta, JoJo’s wife. Her flat face was full of frustration and exhaustion. She wore a long camel hair coat and her hair had been pulled back into a net.

A hard wind shot inside.

“What you want, woman?” JoJo asked like a man who wasn’t afraid of shit.

Loretta – a two-hundred-pound-plus woman whose voice could make the bar jump when she sang – didn’t even glance at the men. “Not you, you ole fool,” she said. “I need Nick.”

I crawled over Sun and followed her out to a loading dock facing a crushed shell lot where she crossed her arms and stared at JoJo’s 1963 Cadillac. Withered leaves from a dying palm tree brushed against the stucco outside the bar.