Static, and the cell cleared.

'Chief Hammer?' West said. 'Chief Hammer? Are you still there?'

'Bubba…' the second stranger crackled again. 'Somebody's on…'

Static, scratch, blare, blip.

'Goddamn it,' West muttered when her phone went dead.

Bubba's real name was Butner Fluck IV. Unlike so many fearless men devoted to pickup trucks, guns, topless bars and the Southern Cross, he had not been born into the tribe of Bubbas, but rather had grown up the son of a theologian in the Northside neighborhood of Ginter Park, where old mansions were in disrepair and Civil War cannonballs on porches were popular. Butner came from a long line of Burners who always went by the nickname 'But', and it was lost on his erudite father, Dr. But Fluck III, that calling his son But in this day and age set the child up for problems.

By the time little But had entered the first grade, the slurs, the slander and the derision were on every tongue. They were whispered in class, shouted on buses and playing fields, and drawn on sheets of notebook paper slipped from desk to desk or left inside little But's locker. When he wrote his name it was But Fluck. In the teacher's grade books he was Fluck, But.

Any way he looked at it, he was screwed, really, and of course his peers came up with any number of other renditions. Mother-But-Flucker, Butter-Flucker, But-Flucking-Boy, Buttock-Fluck, and so on. When he retreated into his studies and went to the head of the class, new pet names were added to the list. But-Head, Pluck-Head, Mother-Flucking-But-Head, Head-But-Head, et al.

For But's ninth birthday he requested camouflage and several toy guns. He became a compulsive eater. He spent a lot of time in the woods hunting imaginary prey. He immersed himself in a growing stash of magazines featuring mercenary soldiers, anarchists, trucks, assault weapons, Civil War battlefields and women in swimsuits. He collected manuals on simple car care and repair, automotive tools and wiring, wilderness survival, fishing, and hiking in bear country. He sneaked cigarettes and was rude. His tenth year he changed his name to Bubba and was feared by all.