“Everett,” she said.

I nodded.

“Be all right, Billie, just stay quiet.”

Again she said, “Everett.”

Again I nodded. The man with the knife in his boot shoved a drinker aside to get next to Billie, who had wedged herself behind my chair. He grabbed her arm.

“Everett,” Billie said.

“Let her go,” I said to the knife man.

“I want that whore,” he said.

“Make the usual arrangements,” I said. “But no grabbing.”

He took his hand off her arm. I was pretty sure he knew I was the guy who killed Koy Wickman. On the other hand, he was drunk, and drunks can be stupid.

“I already paid for the little bitch,” he said.

“And you already done business?” I said.

“I fucked him,” Billie said.

“So?” I said to the guy with the knife.

“So she run off ’fore I was through.”

“He wanted to do stuff that hurt,” Billie said.

“I paid for her,” he said to me.

“That’s for fucking,” I said. “It don’t cover hurting.”

“I wasn’t gonna hurt her,” he said. “We was just playing a little.”

“She don’t want to play,” I said.

“She don’t want to?” he said. “She don’t want to? She’s a fucking whore. Who cares what she don’t want to? I paid good money for the little bitch.”

“You do what you supposed to?” I said to Billie.

“I done stuff with his pecker and then I fucked him,” she said. “He got a ugly little pecker.”

“Probably don’t see a lot of pretty ones,” I said.

The man bent down and took the knife from his boot. It was a big bowie knife with a wide blade. I rapped him on the wrist with both barrels of the shotgun, and the knife clattered to the floor and slid away. The man doubled over, holding his arm against his stomach.