AS THESE THINGS USUALLY GO, I BUSTED MY ASS TO GET TO the Randolph Country sheriff’s station, barely made it in under the wire, and then sat there for an hour reading a copy of Modern Maturity I found outside Wince’s office. I’d just flipped to an article about your sex drive after sixty when the door opened and the sheriff appeared.
“’Bout time.”
“Complications have arisen,” he said, then paused. “What in the hell are you reading?”
“AARP magazine. Somebody must have left it.”
“One of our master criminals, probably. Learning anything?”
“Yeah. I haven’t saved enough to retire, but if I start now I might be able to quit when . . .” I paused to do the math. “Never mind. It’s too depressing.”
“That’s not the half of it. You know those jokes you like to tell?”
“I do. For example . . .”
“That is, if you can call them jokes.”
“That hurts. I lie away nights working on this stuff, you know.”
“You ever think of quitting this business, giving clown college a try?”
“Lots of effort, little difference.”
“Final question: are those orange sodas?”
I nodded.
“I stopped and got Anci some sodas. Didn’t want to leave them outside in the heat.”
Wince licked his lips.
“I have one of those?”
“You still on your diet?”
“Supposedly.”
“Then no.”
“Fair enough. As I was saying, you might want to keep a lid on it in there,” he said. “Consider yourself warned.”
I stood up and we went in. Wince’s office was occupied. Too occupied. Lindley was there, and another guy, a bony thing with a face like a death mask. The serious character who’d made such an impression on Carol Ray. Ammons at last. Lindley was sitting. Ammons was pacing. When Wince led me in Ammons trained a pair of eyes on me might have been pulled from a taxidermied beast, cold, hard, and lifeless. Also, faintly yellow. I liked him immediately and wanted to make friends.
“Slim, you remember Sheriff Lindley?” Wince said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“And this is Senior Agent Ammons of the Illinois State Police MCU.”
“Movimento dei Comunisti Unitari?”
Ammons looked confused.
“I beg your pardon?”
Wince put his head in his palm.
He said, “Oh, holy Jesus.”
It was going to be a long meeting.
IT WAS, TOO. LONG AND BAD.
“You’re pulling it.” Me.
“I wish I were.” Wince.
“The goddamn FBI?” Me again. “Here in SOIL?”
“Yes.” Ammons. “The FBI.”
“No. I’m sorry,” I said. “In this case, it’s got to be the goddamn FBI.”
“Slim . . .” Wince. Of course.
I ignored him.
“Why?”
“Interstate violation of some kind,” Ammons said. “But they’re keeping mum about the specifics. Usually, they at least tell us what it’s all about, but this time they’re keeping it to themselves, which means it’s big. Maybe nightly news big. Meanwhile, they’re working on scotching our case against the Cleaveses and Harvels.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I rose to go. “Well, I wish all y’all the best of luck with that. I really do.”
“Slim . . .” Wince again.
Ammons pressed on. “We believe that the Cleaveses are up to their red necks in a criminal conspiracy involving the White Dragons, weapons, drugs, you name it. And we’re close. We’re very close to bringing them in. We even think we have a shot at bringing them in before the Feds do.”
“But if it’s their investigation . . .”
“We can’t really know it’s their investigation unless they tell us it’s their investigation.”
“And since they won’t talk to y’all . . .”
Ammons tried not to smile, but he didn’t get very far with the project.
“That’s it.”
“So basically this is all about spite.”
Ammons’s smile went away fast.
“Call it what you want.”
“Cool. How about spite?”
Lindley jumped in before Ammons could eat his own face. “There’s just one leak in the dike.”
“Not much suspense here.”
Ammons had calmed down enough to make his neck work. “If the Feds get to you—and trust me, they’re going to get to you—they’ll argue that you’ve tainted our entire operation.” He paused a moment to glare at Wince. “And they wouldn’t be too far off, either.”
I said, “I’m not sure this is my problem.”
“It is if we make it your problem.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So what’s the plan?”
Wince cleared his throat.
“Well, we were kinda . . . uh . . . we were kinda thinking about locking you up for a while.”
I took the phone out of my pocket.
“I’m calling my lawyer,” I said.
Ammons looked at Wince. Wince shook his head back at Ammons.
“Fine,” I said. “Wince, I’m calling your lawyer. What’s your lawyer’s name?”
“Slim . . .”
I put the phone away.
“This is some bullshit now.”
Ammons shrugged.
“It’s suboptimal, yes. But there are a lot of butts on the line over this one.”
“A lot of butts, Slim.” Wince.
I said to Ammons, “Your butt included, I guess.”
“Especially my butt.”
Lindley said, “Maybe we could stop talking about our butts and start working on how to put Slim here into jail.”
“That’s not very nice,” I said.
“Well, I don’t like you.”
I looked at Ammons.
“If those are my choices, I choose the butts.”
“I’m willing to entertain counteroffers,” he said.
I thought about it. They pretended to think about it, too. Oh, they did a powerful job at pretending to think. Wince traced the wood grain in his desk, and Ammons stared off into space like he was working on a mathematical formula for the secret of the human project. But I think it was mostly just politeness. What they were really thinking about was putting me in a hole.
Finally, I said, “I have a counteroffer.”
They looked at me, ready to listen. Or to pretend to.
“It’s a shit-a-brick kinda deal, but at least it’s something.”
IT WAS A SHIT-A-BRICK KINDA DEAL, ALL RIGHT. A HOSPITAL’S worth. Or a jailhouse’s. At first they thought I was nuts, but somehow I talked them into it. Actually, Ammons did. Maybe he thought it would put a bug up the FBI’s ass. I’m not really sure. Ammons did the deed and stalked out. Lindley laughed and shook his head and rumbled away like a storm cloud. What a crazy place the world was. When they were gone, Wince and I found ourselves alone. We blew out hard breaths and sank into our chairs. Wince got up and went to a cabinet and opened it.
“Well, I’ll be . . .”
Inside was a small stack of cookies.
Wince stared at them as though he might cry.
“Secret admirer?” I asked.
“None of your goddamn business,” he said, but he was too happy to be genuinely cross.
“Five cookies?”
“Six.”
“Might have left you the whole box.”
“Why are you trying to prick my condom, boy?”
“I guess you don’t want to hear a warning about high blood pressure, then, do you?”
“That in your old-people magazine, too?”
“Matter of fact.”
I opened an orange soda and took a sip. Wince looked hungrily at that, too.
“Well, I ain’t got time for high blood pressure, boy. You, neither. You better get out of here before Ammons comes to his senses, comes back to relieve you of that badge.”
I took it out of my pocket and held its weight in my hand. They’d wanted to put me in an orange jumpsuit, but in the end I’d talked them into deputizing me. It made a kind of sense, anyway. At least in the mixed-up world of law enforcement politics. This way, anything I knew, anything I learned, anything I had learned, would be the property of the Illinois State Police, with all the protections that came along with that.
“You as a lawman,” Wince marveled. “The world’s turned itself over, belly up, and peed on the sky.”
“Grab an umbrella.”
“You realize the powers and authorities that come along with that, at least in your case, are less than those wielded by a school librarian?”
I pointedly ignored this.
“I got to get home,” I said. “Get myself a ten-gallon hat. Maybe some spurs.”
“You ought to go home and hide until all this is over.”
“I’ll hide under the hat probably.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “You also understand that badge puts Ammons’s career in your hands? You fuck up his case, he’ll go from cop to killer before I can do anything to stop him.”
“I promise to be a good boy.”
“There we are with that again,” he said. “Listen, Slim, I want you to stay out of trouble. You’ve done me a good turn or two in the past, and maybe I owe you one.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s something you don’t want to talk about.”
“No, we can talk about it.”
He pretended not to hear that. He was having fun with his piety and didn’t want to let it go.
“But this thing, it’s bigger than I think you realize. These men aren’t going to write you a ticket and smack your fanny, you get in their way. This is one of those things where the distinction between the cops and crooks won’t be all that obvious.”
“It was obvious before?”
“Those jokes are going to be the end of all of us,” he said. “I don’t suppose you know what any of this is really about, do you?”
“When I find out, I’ll tell you,” I said, but the truth was I knew. Knew it all for a certainty. Shelby Ann. The kill pit beneath the Cleaveses’ house. The Black coal mine. Tibbs’s magic ticket. Even a dummy can only be led around by the nose for so long. Or by the leash.
“I’ll hold my breath,” said Wince.
“Good idea. Make the bad men go away.”
“Hey.”
“Hey, what?”
“Before you go . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Give me one of them sodas.”
“Give me one of them cookies.”
We stared hard at each other for a long moment, but in the end an exchange was made.
“YOU WITH A BADGE? WONDERS NEVER CEASE.” IT WAS ANCI. We were on our cells, so I couldn’t see her face. But her voice sounded almost proud.
“You wanna know what I think? I think you want to give me the dozens but you’re too impressed with your old man’s new offices and powers. How’d it go with Jeep?”
Her voice dropped to a hush. “About him.”
“About Jeep?”
“You know he likes to sing when he drives?”
I was quiet a moment, but she had me. I had to tell the awful truth.
“I know,” I said.
“Show tunes?”
“I know.”
She laughed, but still quietly. Jeep must have been nearby.
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I wanted to,” I said. “Really, I did. But it’s not the kind of thing people talk about.”
“He’s actually got a pretty good voice, for a guy with a head like a cement block.”
“Listen, don’t mention it to anyone else, okay? It’s the man’s secret shame. I was kinda hoping he’d remember not to do it in front of you.”
“Well, I’d have hoped that, too, I’d have known. Truth is, I think he forgot himself and started singing out of habit.”
“Probably you were making him nervous, you and your secret mission,” I said. “Speaking of which, how’d it turn out?”
Her voice was grumpy about it.
“Disappointment. I thought maybe I’d found a real lead, but I came up craps.”
“Better luck next time,” I said.
“We’ll see,” she said. “Where are you off to now?”
“Loves Corner.”
I WATCHED FOR LONGER THAN I THOUGHT I WOULD. I PARKED on a grassy shoulder down the road and sat there sipping Anci’s orange sodas and waiting. I didn’t see Wesley or his car or any of his pot plants. Likely the boy was at work. I hoped the plants had been burned and buried somewhere far away. Seven o’clock rolled around. Then eight and nine. Maybe he was having trouble getting out of the house. Maybe he had kids and they wanted to hear Hop on Pop one more time. Everybody’s got a story. Even the bad guys. Or the good guys. Or whichever it was. But night came on at last, and so did the silver pickup. The one Wesley had mentioned to me that day. The one I thought he’d made up in his paranoia. Silver truck was laying it on thick: Stars and Bars decals, a gun rack, bumper sticker reading ASS, GRASS, OR CASH. The works. He parked twenty yards or so up the street, doused his headlights, and sat there. I jumped down from the Dodge and walked over, keeping low. I had my gun out, but I figured I wasn’t going to need it. Still, always better to be prepared.
One thing, when you’re staking out, you might want to keep the doors locked. Cuts down on nasty surprises. You’d think they’d teach that at the academy, but budget cuts have to happen somewhere, I guess. The passenger door was unlatched, so I opened it and swung on up and closed the door behind me. The man behind the wheel looked at sharply me and my gun. He smiled and raised his hands, but I could tell he recognized me and that he wasn’t afraid. He was wearing a dark suit and a red baseball cap.
“Agent?” I said.
He smiled at me.
“Special Agent. Carney.”
“Special Agent Carney, you and I need to have a little chat.”