“I’ve been reading that book you gave me,” I tell him. “You made some interesting notes in there, and underlined some things.”
“That’s a great little book. I highly recommend it. Living down here in the Bible Belt, it doesn’t hurt to inoculate yourself against all the stupidity.”
“What I was particularly interested in was the word you kept spelling.”
Digging through the books on his folding table, he seizes on a floppy softback with a lurid cover. “That’s what I’m talking about. You ever read this one?” He fires the book across at me, forcing me to catch it against my chest. “Dante’s Inferno. It’s all in there, all the hysteria. What he does is, he writes a poem about hell, and guess what? Everybody who crossed him in life happens to be down there in torment. I mean, yeah right. That’s why they invented hell, so they could send their enemies down there.”
“Don’t tell me you’re interested in poetry.”
The book is heavy in my hands. A memory surfaces. The same copy of Dante-the very same one-thumping down on a picnic table at Ft. Polk more than twenty years ago.
“Mr. Nesbitt, he gave me that book. He wanted me to read it.”
The pages are brown with age. I turn them slowly. “We both know the significance of Inferno, right? Let’s not make this harder than it has to be. You know more about Nesbitt’s operation than you led me to believe.” I put the book down. “Tell me what you know, Jeff.”
“If I didn’t give you everything,” he says, “maybe it was for a reason. Maybe I wanted to see if you were going to keep me in the loop or not. After all, I’ve been working on this longer than you have, and there’s more at stake for me.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything, man. They’re after me. Why do you think I holed up here? What do you think I’ve been doing ever since they killed Mr. Nesbitt? Twiddling my thumbs? Hardly. I’ve been getting on top of this thing, figuring out who they are and how they operate.”
“So tell me who they are. Tell me how they operate.”
“I could,” he says, wagging his finger. “Oh, believe me, I could. Only there’s nothing you could do about it, March. I realized that right off, even before I decided to bail you out that night. You can’t help me. You’re too tied up in the rules. You’ve got no room to maneuver.”
“Try me.”
His smile is halfway to a sneer. “What were you doing anyway, trying to break in here? If you wanted to rile me up, congratulations. I’m riled. I did you a favor-more than a favor-and this is what I get in return?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you ever since I saw the underlining in your Foxhole Atheist book. You gave me the book for a reason. You wanted me to make the connection.”
“Did I? You took your time.”
“I’ve been busy since last time. I caught up with Hilda, for one thing, and now I have names on all the guys who came after me that night. It was one of them who killed my partner. I’m pretty sure it was one of them we found in the park, which is what started this whole thing.”
“What started it for you,” he says.
“And I found out about Nesbitt’s intelligence operation down in Matamoros, and the code name of his insider there. Inferno. But you already knew about that, Jeff.”
Something I’ve said flips a switch in Jeff’s head. He freezes a second, then turns, his eyes burning. He starts coming toward me, raising a finger in the air. Not threatening, but argumentative, like he’s determined to set me straight. “You wanna know what I know? You want me to tell you what I know? You think I’m the one who’s holding out-?”
As he rushed forward, my pocket starts to buzz. The ringer grows louder and louder as we stand there looking at each other, waiting. His mouth twitches. He blinks. A smile cracks across his lips.
“Are you gonna get that or not?”
I smile, too. The absurdity of the situation. I take out my phone and step away. The number on the screen is unfamiliar and I don’t recognize the voice at first.
“You’re gonna want to hear this,” the voice says in my ear, “but first I need assurances. Just because I came by the information doesn’t mean I’m in any way involved-”
“Who is this?” I ask.
“What?” He sounds disappointed. “It’s Sam Dearborn. From Dearborn Gun and Blade. You said if I found out anything, you’d be in my debt.”
“Right. Mr. Dearborn.” I motion Jeff to sit tight for a minute. “What did you find out?”
“Like I said, I want assurances.”
“Absolutely. Now what do you have for me?”
“Well,” he says. “You’re not going to believe this. I just got off the phone with a certain friend of mine, and what he told me I think you’re gonna be interested in. You were asking me all those questions about Brandon Ford, on account of him being dead.”
“I remember.”
Jeff walks back to the window unit, sucking up the cool air. I turn away from the corner of the garage he’s converted to living space, picking my way into the garage’s dead zone, the empty lift hole and the grime-covered, long-abandoned equipment.
“Only this friend of mine,” Dearborn is saying, “it turns out he’d been contacted by Ford a while back about getting some assault rifles. He wanted ten M4 carbines and. . well, he didn’t want them tracing back to him. This friend of mine, he’s apparently not as ethical as me. Point is, he has the guns in his shop, but never heard back from Ford for the obvious reason that he was dead.”
“So where are these guns exactly?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jeff stand upright. Alert. He starts coming toward me.
“He moved them to a storage lockup he has, but that’s not important. The important thing is that just a minute ago he gets a call wanting to arrange to collect them. And it was Brandon Ford on the phone.”
“It was Ford?”
Jeff’s eyes go wide.
“Who’s supposedly dead,” Dearborn says.
“And when is this collection supposed to happen?” I ask, my pulse racing.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s happening right now.”
Five minutes later I’m pushing my way out the door, heading around the garage toward my waiting car. Behind me, Jeff does up one of the dead bolts and runs to catch up. Later, I’ve already told him. We’ll continue this later.
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Where are you going? You’ve found out where Ford is, haven’t you?”
“I’ll call you,” I tell him. “Answer next time.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You’re not coming with me.”
“I am,” he says. “Try to stop me. Besides, you’re flying solo now. Who else are you gonna call for backup? You know I can handle myself, March. Come on.”
He’s standing at my passenger door, his hand on the latch.
“Fine. Get in,” I say. Knowing I’m going to regret it.
CHAPTER 24
With Jeff riding shotgun, I take the Gulf Freeway into downtown, snaking back and forth through midday traffic, availing myself of the shoulder when necessary. Jeff wants to slam a flashing light onto the roof, Starsky and Hutch-style, but I’ve been driving my own car since my unofficial suspension began. Traffic stacks up at the Southwest Freeway exit, reducing our progress to a crawl. Once we’re through it, the pace picks up and I steer to the far left lane, hurtling by at ninety miles per hour. We slow down again at the Loop, then pour on the speed through Sharpstown, past Houston Baptist, hooking a left on the Sam Houston Tollway en route to Missouri City.
Exiting the tollway, we pull into a gas station along the feeder, where Dearborn waits in the front seat of a glossy black Chrysler with a stacked Bentley-clone grill. He locks up and jumps in the back, reaching over the seat to shake hands.
“It’s just up the road,” he says. “I just got off the phone with him, and he says he’s still waiting for Ford to show up.”
“So we beat him?”