"Is it serious?" Perry knew that there was the potential for serious, major lawlessness from his little settlement. It wasn't a failing condo complex rented out to Filipina domestics and weird entrepreneurs like him. It was a place where the cops would love an excuse to come in with riot batons (his funny eyebrow twitched) and gas, the kind of place where there almost certainly were a few very bad people living their lives. Miami had bad people, too, but the bad people in Miami weren't his problem. And the bad people and the potential chaos were what he loved about the place, too. He'd grown up in the kind of place where everything was predictable and safe and he'd hated every minute of it. The glorious chaos around him was just as he liked it. The wood-smoke curled up his nose, fragrant and all-consuming. "I don't know anymore. I thought I'd retire and settle down and take up painting. Now I'm basically a mob boss. Not the bad kind, but still. It's a lot of work." "Pimpin' ain't easy." Perry saw the shocked look on Francis's face and added hastily, "Sorry -- not calling you a pimp. It's a song lyric is all." "We got pimps here now. Whores, too. You name it, we got it. It's still a good place to live -- better than Miami, if you ask me -- but it could go real animal. Bad, bad animal." Hard to believe, standing there in the wood-smoke, licking his fingers, drinking his beer. His cold seemed to have been baked out by the steamy swampy heat. "Well, Francis, if anyone knows how to keep peace, it's you." "Social workers come around, say the same thing. But there's people around here with little kids, they worry that the social workers could force them out, take away their children." It wasn't like Francis to complain like this, it wasn't in his nature, but here it was. The strain of running things was showing on him. Perry wondered if his own strain was showing that way. Did he complain more these days? Maybe he did. An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Perry drank his beer, morosely. He thought of how ridiculous it was to be morose about the possibility that he was being morose, but there you had it. Finally his phone rang and saved him from further conversation. He looked at the display and shook his head. It was Kettlewell again. That first voicemail had made him laugh aloud, but when they hadn't called back for a couple days, he'd figured that they had just had a little too much wine and placed the call. Now they were calling back, and it was still pretty early on the West Coast. Too early for them to have had too much wine, unless they'd really changed. "Perry Perry Perry!" It was Kettlebelly. He sounded like he might be drunk, or merely punch-drunk with excitement. Perry remembered that he got that way sometimes. "Kettlewell, how are you doing?" "I'm here too, Perry. I cashed in my return ticket." "Suzanne?"