"Floyd…?”

And Floyd had that look as if caught in headlights and turned to stone, the poor guy hunched inside that suitcoat too big for him, now reaching up to hang on to a guy wire.

It was never in Dennis' mind these guys were friends. If anything he thought the straight-shooter in the cowboy hat might produce a pair of handcuffs. It was the other one doing the talking, words Dennis couldn't make out. He watched Floyd seem to stand taller as he shook his head back and forth in denial. Now the slick-haired one drew a pistol from under his sportshirt hanging out. A long thin barrel-it looked to Dennis like a.22 target pistol called the Sportsman, or something like that. The one in the cowboy hat and trooper shades stood looking out at the grounds like this was none of his business. But then he followed once the slickhaired one took Floyd by the coat collar and brought him around back of the tank, out of view from the hotel.

Now they were under the scaffolding, eighty feet directly below Dennis.

He turned on the perch to face the ladder and was looking at the Mississippi River and Arkansas and a wash of color way off at the bottom of the sky losing its light. He wanted to look down but didn't want to stick his head over the top rung of the ladder and see them looking up at him. He wanted to believe they'd come all the way across the lawn from the hotel without noticing him. He wanted to dive, enter the water ten feet from them in a rip so perfect it wouldn't make a sound and then slip out of the tank and run, run like hell. He heard Floyd's voice. He heard the words "Swear to God," and heard a sound like pop from down there, a gunshot or somebody driving a nail with one blow of the hammer, a hard sound that reached him and was gone. Dennis waited, looking at Arkansas. He heard three more pops then, one after another in quick succession. There was a silence, Dennis thinking it was done, and the sound reached him again, that hard pop. A minute or so passed. He saw them come around to the side of the tank, moving away from it.