The kid drove a Mustang (I’d seen it parked next to Monahan’s Buick at the Wheelhouse Motel) whose headlights announced him when he pulled into the mouth of the drive. What followed was a graceless dance: he got out and unlocked and moved the metal gate, returned to the car, pulled in deeper, got out and locked up again, then back in his car to come crunching up the gravel drive.

When he unlocked the kitchen door and came in, I was to one side and put the nose of the nine millimeter in his neck. By now it was dark in the house, but some moonlight filtered in the dirty cracked windows over the filthy old sink and I could see his blue eyes pop. They were light blue and looked spooky in the dimness. I mean the room’s dimness, not his.

“Hands on your head,” I said.

He put them there. The eyes stayed wide. He was even skinnier, close up-still in the black Poison t-shirt, but a light tan jacket open over it. He had a snubby. 38 in a jacket pocket. I took it, slipped it in my left-hand windbreaker pocket.

“Let’s talk,” I said.

He said, in a husky tenor, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Not cops.”

He swallowed. “Then what are you?”

“An interloper.”

“What the fuck’s an interloper?”

“A guy who noticed what you’re up to, and wants in.”

He frowned. Thinking took effort; it even made lines in his boyish face. By the way, I made him for maybe twenty-five.

He asked, “What do you mean, ‘wants in’?”

“Sit down.”

“Where? Do you see a fuckin’ chair?”

“I see the fuckin’ floor.”

“It’s filthy.”

“I don’t think I mind.”

He sat, cross-legged, Indian-style. He folded his arms, as if that would protect him. He looked up at me, like an inexperienced girl afraid of her first blow job.