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as soon as I was back in the minivan. “Leave a fish for the lovely Mr. Worthington.”
    “I suspect he won’t be home yet,” I said, just the slightest hint of pity in my voice.
    “I hope the cops find him barefoot, frenzied, and naked in some roadside ditch a week from now,” Margo answered dispassionately.
    “Remind me never to cross Margo Roth Spiegelman,” I mumbled, and Margo laughed.
    “Seriously,” she said. “We bring the fucking rain down on our enemies.”
    “Your enemies,” I corrected.
    “We’ll see,” she answered quickly, and then perked up and said, “Oh, hey, I’ll handle this one. The thing about Jason’s house is they have this crazy good security system. And we can’t have another panic attack.”
    “Um,” I said.
    Jason lived just down the road from Karin, in this uber-rich subdivision called Casavil a. All the houses in Casavil a are Spanish-style with 51/307
    the red-tile roofs and everything, only they weren’t built by the Spanish. They were built by Jason’s dad, who is one of the richest land de-velopers in Florida. “Big, ugly homes for big, ugly people,” I told Margo as we pulled into Casavil a.
    “No shit. If I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven bedrooms, do me a favor and shoot me.” We pulled up in front of Jase’s house, an architectural monstrosity that looked generally like an oversize Spanish hacienda except for three thick Doric columns going up to the roof. Margo grabbed the second catfish from the backseat, uncapped a pen with her teeth, and scrawled in handwriting that didn’t look much like hers:
    MS’s love For you: it Sleeps With the Fishes “Listen, keep the car on,” she said. She put Jase’s WPHS baseball hat on backward.
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Keep it in drive,” she said.
    “Okay,” I said, and felt my pulse rising. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth . Catfish and spray paint in hand, Margo threw the door open, jogged across the Worthingtons’ expansive front lawn, and then hid behind an oak tree. She waved at me through the darkness, and I waved back, and then she took a dramatically deep breath, puffed her cheeks out, turned, and ran.
    She’d only taken one stride when the house lit up like a municipal Christmas tree, and a siren started blaring. I briefly contemplated abandoning Margo to her fate, but just kept breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth as she ran toward the house. She heaved the fish through a window, but the sirens were so loud I could barely even hear the glass breaking. And then, just because she’s 52/307
    Margo Roth Spiegelman, she took a moment to carefully spray-paint a lovely M on the part of the window that wasn’t shattered. Then she was running all out toward the car, and I had a foot on the accelerator and a foot on the brake, and the Chrysler felt at that moment like a Thoroughbred racehorse. Margo ran so fast her hat blew off behind her, and then she jumped into the car, and we were gone before she even got the door closed.
    I stopped at the stop sign at the end of the street, and Margo said,
    “What the hell? Go go go go go,” and I said, “Oh, right,” because I had forgotten that I was throwing caution to the wind and everything. I rolled through the three other stop signs in Casavil a, and we were a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue before we saw a cop car roar past us with its lights on.
    “That was pretty hardcore,” Margo said. “I mean, even for me. To put it Q-style, my pulse is a little elevated.”
    “Jesus,” I said. “I mean, you couldn’t have just left it in his car? Or at least at the doorstep?”
    “We bring the fucking rain , Q. Not the scattered showers.”
    “Tell me Part Eight is less terrifying.”
    “Don’t worry. Part Eight is child’s play. We’re going back to Jefferson Park. Lacey’s house. You know where she lives, right?” I did, although God knows Lacey Pemberton