You crick it at the Krishnas when they start bugging you.

Freddy got a receipt, and after two phone calls the widow said she could be out of the house by ten that night, and that she would leave the keys next door when she left. Freddy returned to the cab and told Mrs. Freeman he had rented the little house.

“I just write four or five pages in the morning,” Willeford wrote one time, “and then kind of wander around or take naps in the afternoon, but this is what I want to do, I guess, or I would do something different.”

wearing a hundred-dollar brown silk sports shirt and yellow linen golf slacks, was making notes with a gold pencil in a leather notebook. He put the notebook into his hip pocket and crossed the blue-carpeted room to talk to two men who said they were from Waycross, Georgia, John and Irwin Peeples.

“Where’d you do your time?” Hoke asked Freddy. “Marianna or Raiford?” “Time? What time? What makes you think I did time?” Hoke shrugged. “The way you tucked into that flan, and because you ate it first, before tackling your sandwich. How long were you in Marianna?”

The girl was his only lead to Mendez, and he didn’t intend to take any chances. The white TransAm, with its Kansas license plate, would be easy to follow, whereas his own beatup Pontiac blended right in with the thousands of dented cars on Miami’s highways.

Freddy spent three years there. Moreover, Freddy had also taken a severe beating as soon as Enoch was returned to Preston.

They both laughed, but laughing didn’t mask Hoke’s uneasiness. He didn’t know which was worse—telling a father that his son was dead or telling a sister that her brother was dead, but he was glad he didn’t have to tell both of them.

They turned the car over to valet parking, and when Freddy showed his room key to the doorman, a bellman came out with a cart and brought Susan’s prepared dinner up to their room. Freddy dialed room service and ordered a bottle of champagne, a pot of coffee, and table service for two. They ate the stuffed pork chops and still-warm sweet potatoes by