Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Earth . . .

We’re driving on the highway in the Buick when a hawk crashes through our windshield.

“Holy hell,” says Floyd, and Roger and I say stuff too. The car swerves.

Brap, screeches the hawk. It’s dying, then it dies. It’s stuck through our windshield, its body on the hood and its head inside, like it’s peeking through curtains, checking things out backstage. There are spikes of glass, I spill my Big Gulp, and the hawk has a squirrel in its talons.

“Dammit.” Sprite fills the crotch of my jeans. I’m riding shotgun.

“There’s a hawk in our windshield,” shouts Floyd. He sounds awed or thrilled. He’s in the backseat. Wind whistles in around the hawk’s body, which is wedged tight. Roger, who’s driving, fights with the wheel.

“There’s a hawk in our windshield,” shouts Floyd, “and there’s glass everywhere.”

Roger pulls over. We take deep breaths. It’s six in the morning, no other cars around. There are ribbons of fog over the highway, points of dew in the roadside grass. Also, hanging dead before us is a red-tailed king of the skies.

“Wow,” says Roger. He’s got on black leather driving gloves.

“The hawk is holding a rat or something,” says Floyd.

It’s early May, the new millennium. I’m thirty-two and I bust people’s heads for Honey Pobrinkis, a Chicago gangster. Floyd’s my partner in the head-busting department. He wears his blond hair in a biker’s ponytail, and he’s as dumb as tundra, but he’s got