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you.”
    â€œCan’t see that happening, Zoe.”
    â€œI know you can’t.”
    â€œMake sure you get the title when you pay.”
    â€œRight. I’ve never done this before.”
    â€œYou’re cranky in the morning.”
    â€œYou’d be cranky too on three hours’ sleep.”
    â€œNobody told you to stay up all night screwing, Zoe.”
    â€œI was working .”
    â€œI saw the cowboy boots in the kitchen. You working on a ranch these days?”
    Zoe reached into her coat for her cigarettes. “You weren’t so critical back when they were your boots.”
    Parson laughed. It was true. He and Zoe had had some times together. They had even talked about moving in, having kids. But then she went bad on meth, and Parson had left her alone. When she came back into his life, a couple years later and clean, he’d been glad to reconnect but the sexual thing was gone. The dope had taken her down physically, and she never made it all the way back. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes were dull, as if something had smudged her soul and she couldn’t get it clean.
    But she was a good partner when he needed one, like today. She was smart and knew how to keep her mouth shut. And she was always up for making a quick five hundred. Of course, knowing her, she’d probably spend it on the guy who owned the cowboy boots, the guy who was, presumably, still snoring away in her bed this morning.
    â€œYou’re not going to smoke in my car,” he told her now, watching her fish around in her purse for matches.
    â€œLet me out then.”
    Parson shook his head in resignation. “Use your coffee cup for your ashes,” he told her. “I don’t want you getting my ashtray dirty.”
    Zoe lit up. “You are an anal motherfucker, Parson.”
    Terrapin’s Auctions was housed in a converted barn on a paved road a few hundred yards from the shore of Lake George. Parson could see the cars set to go on sale from a quarter mile away, lined up in the parking lot in front of the building. The vehicles were all from the same era—a Thunderbird, a GTO, an Impala, and the ’Cuda. The online literatureadvertising the sale stated that they were part of a collection of the man whose estate was on the block today, and that they were older restorations. They looked good from the road.
    â€œThe white one on the end,” Parson said as they drove slowly by.
    â€œI know what a Barracuda looks like,” Zoe snapped.
    He dropped her at a gas station a mile away and while she went inside to call a cab Parson drove back to the auction house and parked in the lot behind the barn, then walked over for a closer look at the cars. They’d been done up right, probably ten or fifteen years earlier, although somebody had decided to change the GTO from an automatic to a four-speed and, rather than find the proper console, they had cut an ugly hole in the existing one to accommodate the shifter. Still, it was only the ’Cuda that interested Parson. He had the production figures in a notebook he carried and he checked the numbers on the door plate against those on the inner fenders and those on the engine block. He pulled on coveralls from the back of the Escalade and crawled underneath to make certain that the transmission and differential were original as well. It was a good car. The odometer read 43,000 miles and Parson had no trouble believing it was accurate.
    Zoe arrived while he was checking out the ’Cuda, and he saw her as she got out of the taxi and went directly inside to register to bid. Parson shed the coveralls and went to sit on a picnic table in the shade of some maple trees in an expanse of lawn beyond the auction parking lot, checking and replying to messages on his BlackBerry while he waited for the auctioneer to come out. Zoe never came back outside and Parson presumed that she was watching the sale.
    It was almost noon when the crowd started