To set a date, Lyle had fielded Cain’s supposed illnesses. The flu, cancer of a dog. Now, Barry Cain was there with a pink drink he said his wife drank when pregnant.
Once Lyle would have asked if it was true what he supposed: that the body had been removed prior to the law enforcement sweep, that perhaps, even, the investigation had been led by agency men embedded in the police. But there was no book, no scoop left. There was only making that clear.
“You probably know why I asked you here,” Lyle said.
“Confess I don’t.”
“It isn’t for the book I’m not writing,” Lyle said. “Which maybe you didn’t know. What I’m not doing.” The beer was spit warm in his hand, a craft selection in a precious stein. “Maybe that’s why you were hesitant to meet.”
Cain flopped his hand over and ran through the diseases again, vet bills. “They get old, and it breaks your heart,” he said. “Because they can’t help themselves. They’re only animals.”
“What I’m saying is, you don’t have to worry,” Lyle said. “Because I am standing groundless without my source.”
“I’m a source,” Cain said.
“McCreight was my source.”
“Too crazy to manage?”
“He thought more than friends or family, in algorithms we trust, and yet everywhere you look, it’s incursions. What is so crazy about that?”
“Liked the guy enough to hire him,” Cain said, “but he had his proclivities, and they were the kind of proclivities you intake enough, everyone is out to get you.”
“I’m dropping the book and keeping my nose clean,” Lyle said. “Do you understand?”
Cain’s fat hands were folded in his lap. He kept them there and leaned into the bar to sip the pregnancy cocktail. “And why would you do that?”
“Because,” Lyle said. “I have a daughter too.”