Outside, an engine revved up. Tires ground on gravel. Through the fly-spotted windowpanes that remained, she saw a fiery yellow low-slung car with porthole windows swerve onto the highway with a clash of gears. She couldn’t see the driver, but assumed it was the man who had brushed by her. What would a man who drove a collector’s car, dressed in style, and carried a gun, be doing at a place like this on a Saturday afternoon?

One word leaped into her mind. Drugs.

She shivered. Where was Uncle Jimmy?

Her eyes strafed the darkened recesses of the room. The only other person she saw, the balding, pockmarked man beside the cash register, took a drag on a skinny cigarette, winked slowly and obscenely, and laid a knife on the bar. It had a bone handle, a serrated edge, and a wicked point. "Come on in, pretty mama," he said. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life."

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