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the
seekers who refresh the town's battered and eroding soul, and
funnels them into two thin lanes that hop from key to key between
the ocean and the Gulf, between ranks of power lines and strings of
pelicans, between dank motels and stalking egrets, salty bars and
patient barracuda, porno stores and sweeping tides. There are exits
from this road but they are all dead ends, incomplete, unsatisfying
stoppings-short. Only one route leads through to the edge that is
powerfully agreed upon as the finish to this part of the world. On
that hurtling and constricted path there is nowhere to hide.
    Which is why Chop Parilla and Squid Berman
had positioned themselves on the shoulder of the highway just where
it crosses Cow Key Bridge and enters Key West proper.
    It was early afternoon when they took up
their post. The sun drew steam out of the mangroves when it broke
between the spongy clouds that were blowing westward, carrying with
them some of the last of the prodigious summer rains. The day grew
hotter and traffic rumbled on the bridge. Each sort of vehicle made
a different noise. Mopeds buzzed like paper on a comb. Cars plunked
over seams in the concrete. Trucks forced a groan from the trestles
and sent forth walls of wind that whistled in the railings.
    Sid the Squid, morbidly sensitive to noises,
as to most things, was made jumpy by the cacophony. He kept getting
out of Chop Parilla's Jaguar—a mosaic of extracted, reassembled
parts—patrolling some yards of Florida, and climbing in again.
    Squid was built to be jumpy. He was shorter
than average, and small-boned, but with incongruously bandy muscles
that swelled between his narrow joints; at moments it seemed like
he might snap his arms and legs from movements too spasmodic. His
elbows were pointy, like Popeye's, and his Adam's apple stuck out
so far that it deformed the collars of his T-shirts. His eyeballs
bulged, and an improbable expanse of white could usually be seen
around his flickering hazel irises. Now he dove back into the
idling, air-conditioned Jag and said, "Hey, Chop, y'ever do a job
like this before?"
    "No." Truth was, Parilla's career had cleaved
to the mundane. Besides stealing cars, he collected loans,
occasionally set insurance fires, broke fingers and noses when it
was unavoidable. Straightforward stuff, conventional.
    "Me neither," said the Squid. "But I like it.
I'm psyched. Ya know what I like about it, Chop?"
    He paused what was, for him, a beat, but for
most other people was a quarter beat. Chop did not have time to
answer, and Squid went on in his chronically humid voice, the voice
of someone with too much wetness seeping through the blue strands
underneath his tongue.
    "It makes no sense. I mean, it's pure—it has
no purpose. Not like, say, robbing something. Torching something.
Vulgar ordinary shit. Where's the creativity in that? This is like
. . . it's like getting paid to be a gremlin. Hired to direct a
nightmare. Yeah! Ya see what I'm sayin'?"
    The statement was a little high-flown and
abstract for Chop. He answered, "Can we steal his car?"
    Squid rolled his bulging eyes. "That ain't
the job."
    "We're s'posed t'annoy him," argued Chop.
"Wouldn't that annoy him?"
    Squid didn't answer. He sprang out of the Jag
again, paced along the shoulder, listening to the orchestra of
traffic.
    Shadows started to lengthen, silhouettes of
palms were pasted on the roadway. The sun went from white to yellow
and revealed the fine grain of the inconstant air. After a time
Chop lowered the electric window and yelled out, "Squid, let's get
a cuppa coffee."
    The bandy man hesitated. He was launched on a
performance, bringing to bear on a campaign all his loony
concentration. It bothered him to leave his lookout, and he bounced
from one foot to the other, deciding whether he would stay or
go.
    "C'mon," said Chop, and he gestured toward a
pink and orange Dunkin' Donuts sign a quarter mile away, at the
point where the Key West coastline bellied out and the