“Thanks,” the pool shooter said, his eyes flat.

“No problem,” Johnny said.

He sat at the bar, ordered a soft drink, and peeled a hard-boiled egg. The pool shooter ran the balls in a string down to the nine ball, chalking his cue before each shot, his eyes never leaving his game. Then he replaced his cue in the wall rack and started to leave the bar.

“Where’s your friend?” Johnny asked.

“Which friend?” the man asked.

“The guy you drove out with.”

“You lost me.”

“No matter what you guys are getting paid, if I was you, I’d give the money back.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s good to know. But I got no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said.

“Maybe I got you confused with somebody else.”

“Yeah, maybe you do,” the man said.

Johnny watched the man with roses and parrots tattooed on his arms go out the door and cross the street, then walk down an alley, where a car was parked. The man walked gracefully, light-footed, like a prizefighter, his back a triangle of sinew and muscle. Just before he reached the car, a Firebird, he turned and looked back at the bar.

When Johnny got back home, he strung tin cans on wires around his house and removed a box from under his bed containing a bowie knife that had been forged from a car spring, and a trade hatchet, with an oak handle and a half-moon hook on the head, given to him by his grandfather. He went into his toolshed and ground the hatchet on an emery wheel, then sharpened both it and the bowie knife on a whetstone and returned to the house.

The day was growing warmer, and through the window he could see flies hatching out of the reeds on the riverbanks, drifting onto the riffle, where rainbow trout popped them as soon as they touched the surface. He fell asleep in a chair on the porch and thought he heard dry thunder on the far side of the mountains that ringed his land.

EVERY DEFENSE ATTORNEY has clients who enter his life on a seemingly temporary basis, then become the human equivalent of chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe.