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Back in my room I opened the FedEx envelope and shook out the bills and an assortment of change.

$567.89. And, true to form, no note. Not that I'd asked for one.

Under certain circumstances, the odd amount would mean Mom had sent whatever was lying around, but that wasn't the case here.

Five hundred.

Sixty.

And seven dollars.

Eighty.

And nine cents.

Five six seven eight nine, an ascending numerical sequence. Sent specifically to bring me luck, to raise my spirits, to lift my fortunes.

I'm lucky there wasn't a crystal pyramid in the envelope.

Five hundred sixty-seven and eighty-nine cents. Enough to cover the new phone, buy some groceries and pay off some of the IOUs on the fridge.

I thought about what I'd do the next day. Sleep in. Have some coffee. Pick up around the place, clean the tub. Go do some grocery shopping. Maybe hit the bookstore for a few novels. Get the latest issue of Femmes Fatale. Stop by the shop. Have lunch. Buy a couple DVDs. Come home and have some dinner. Watch a movie. And in bed by seven. Just like pretty much every day this last year. Any day when I had money, that is.

I thought about it. How nice and mellow it would be. A day to myself after having to be around people and be at Po Sin's beck and call and hear all his shit.

Yeah, a me day as a reward for all that hard work.

I picked up the handset from the phone I'd brought into the bedroom.

—Clean Team.

—Hey it's Web.

—Yeah?

—You find anyone for tomorrow?

—Why?

—Nothing.

—Didn't get any money from mommy today?

—No.

—Well, you want to work, all you got to do is say so.

—I want to work.

PIPE BOMB IN THE ASS

There was a lot of blood at the Malibu beach house. And it was everywhere. Really everywhere.

Gabe studied the thick maroon blotch at the center of a lighter red eruption splashed over the wall and headboard, all of it studded with gray and yellow and pink gobbets of dangling matter.

He fingered a strip of yellow tape, marked like a yardstick, that ran up the edge of the wall. Near the top it intersected with another piece that ran horizontally just over the highest point of the mess. He looked at that point.

—That wasn't a nine.

The deputy coughed in the doorway.

—Yeah, what we thought. But it was. He did it with a mouth full of water.

Gabe looked again at the dry blood.

—That would do it.

I thought about high school science classes. How shock waves travel through water. I thought about what would happen if you filled a soda can with water and stuck the barrel of a gun in the hole and pulled the trigger. And then the deputy filled in the gaps in my imagination.

—The water shredded his cheeks. Crushed his nasal passages and ripped his nose off. Some of it was forced down his throat and it turned his tongue inside out and punched a hole in the bottom of his stomach. Goes without saying it took the whole back of his head off. Everything behind the ears.

He rapped his knuckle on the wall opposite the bed.

—Created so much pressure in his sinuses, his eyes popped out. We found one of them over here.

I looked through the open door that led to the master bath. Blood spackled the white tile and porcelain and bath towels. My reflection in the mirror over the twin sinks was glazed with dried streaks of red. Beyond, through a door at the far end of the bathroom, and let me just say that it was a really big fucking bathroom, I could see more blood spattering the carpet, chair and desk in what looked to be a small den. Small by the standards of this house, that is.

But those rooms were nothing compared with the bedroom. The bed-room looked painted in blood, but not well painted, mind you. Painted, in point of fact, by a collection of one-armed troglodytes employing bundles of reeds rather than brushes and rollers. Painted in dripping and splotchy reds, maroons and purples punctuated by bits and clots of gray and white and black, and the occasional twisted knot of tendon.

—This is unfuckingbelievable.

Gabe and the deputy looked at me.