“You got some idea how to find your son,” I said, “but you’re telling us, not the FBI?”
“That’s right,” Hirem said. “I don’t trust those guys. I don’t trust the law. I don’t trust my mother-in-law all that much, and she’s dead some ten years now.”
“But you trust us?” Leonard said. “Didn’t you send those bozos to kill us?”
“It was business, but I can tell about you guys, and I can trust you.”
“Say you can?” I said.
“I think I can. You’re like the old guys in the organization, you got a sense of honor.”
I didn’t believe the organization, as Hirem referred to it, ever had a sense of honor, but I listened.
“Bottom line is I like you better than them,” he said. “Let’s put it that way and call it close enough. What I think is I’m gonna get a better shot with you than them.”
“You’re the one gonna sing to them,” Leonard said. “You’re gonna tell them everything, so why not tell them this?”
“Get my kid back safe, I’ll tell them whatever they want to know. After that, it don’t matter for me. I should’ve been a barber. My daddy was a barber and he offered me into the business, but I didn’t take it.”
“There’s still time to hone up your skills,” I said. “But you do, you’ll be giving prison haircuts.”
“Listen now,” Hirem said. “I’m gonna tell you guys some things I need you to know, so you got some idea who might get in your way.”
“Sort of figured this might not just be a bring the kid home kind of thing,” Leonard said. “It never is.”
“What I know some others can figure out,” Hirem said, “and the people I worked for, they can figure better sometimes than the FBI. These feds may have our phones tapped, and they may have all kinds of law on their side, but these guys I work for, they been around awhile now, and they got people more expendable than the feds got. You hear me?”
“We’re all ears,” I said.
“First and foremost, get my boy back.”
“And the girl?” I said.
“She ain’t nothing to me,” Hirem said. “But it makes Tim feel all right to have her around, I can get over her being coated in chocolate.”
“So that’s what this is,” Leonard said, holding out his hands, looking astonished. “I just thought I was dirty, and it’s been chocolate all the while.”
“Not now, Leonard,” I said.
“Ain’t got nothing against your people,” Hirem said, looking at Leonard. “Just never figured I’d have a boy fuckin’ one of them.”
“Now that makes me really feel tight with you,” Leonard said.
“I’m not used to all the changes in things,” Hirem said.
“Civil rights happened … let me see,” Leonard said, “about mid-sixties, right? And the Civil War, it was over some one hundred years before that. Good to see you’re catching up.”
“My boy never did cotton to what I do, the way I think. And maybe that’s good. I’m not so sure about things I was sure about just a few months ago.”
“Death threats and prison terms can change a man’s perspective,” I said. “We know.”
Hirem nodded. “Thing is, I don’t really know where my boy is, but I have a maybe. He was a little kid, we were close. His mother was dead and it was just me and some hired help. We had a place we went to, rented a cabin by the lake and fished. He mentioned it from time to time, though we quit going there some years ago. It had good memories for him, back when he thought I was just a businessman and his daddy. We went there and fished and talked, and from the way he talked, I knew then he wasn’t like me, that there was something different about him. I’d had any sense I’d have gotten out of the business and gone into the barbering.”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” Leonard said. “Ain’t nothing in that story matter to me except where you think he is. I want to get this done and go home.”
“You’ll keep him from being hurt?” Hirem said. “He’s only nineteen.”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure he is protected. We’ll protect the girl too.”
“She’s your choice,” Hirem said. “Something happens to him, you got to make sure whoever did it gets theirs.”
“That’s not our business,” I said. “Not part of our agreement.”
“All right,” Hirem said. “Just protect him if you find him. Place we used to go, place I think he may have went because I noticed a couple of his rods and reels were gone—I don’t think he understands the deep doo-doo he’s in. Him and that girl, they don’t got a clue. They’ve run off with dirty money and they took some fishing poles with them.”
“I’m sure they don’t know what they’re into,” I said. “I’m beginning to suspect that neither do we. Where’s the place, Hirem?”
“Lake O’ the Pines. There’s a series of cabins up there, fella named Bill Jordan rents them, or used to. They’re on the east side of the lake. Ain’t much. And there’s no guarantee my boy’s there, but he might be. He’s not there, maybe I can think of something else. But right now that’s all I got.”
“That’s it?” Leonard said. “Man, you got a con on these feds, don’t you?”
“Not if he’s there,” Hirem said. “He is, it’s no con.”
“Guess that’ll have to do,” I said.
“Let me give you a word to the wise,” Hirem said. “The organization has done had me try and hit you guys, and you’re harder to kill than anyone would have thought. But they got other people. They may send some of the regular toughs one more time, some tougher and smarter than Tanedrue. Couple of those boys with Tanedrue, they were real professionals, and you handed them their asses, so they’ll be more careful next time. They might just pass GO and jump to the big time.”
“Big time?” Leonard said.
Hirem nodded. “That’s right. They got people don’t work for them directly. Freelancers. Hitters. And they’re a whole ’nuther ball game, fellas. These people they hire, one or two in particular, bad sonsabitches. There’s no one quite like them. They’re like those, whatchacallits, the Jap guys in black.”
“Ninjas,” I said.
“I know, sounds like some kind of movie, but they’re for real. I know their work, but I don’t know them, and I don’t know anyone that’s ever seen them. They get a call through some kind of contact, the job gets done, and they get paid. So keep your eyes peeled and your ears open.”
“I got a question,” I said. “Conners, the cop. He have anything to do with the hit?”
“Conners helped put it together,” Hirem said. “He didn’t like the way you talked to him, Hap. He thought he’d go over there and show his big ass and that would be enough. You’d start some kind of payment plan on the dope you flushed. Or go to work for them, something like that. When you didn’t, well, he came to me. And I’ve told you how it is these days with the upper management. They ain’t much on compromise or negotiation. It’s all about respect. They learned that in prison. You don’t get respect there, you either wind up with a shank in your gut or a dick in your ass. They come out of prison, they’re still the same. And you two, you disrespected them big-time by beating up their hired help. But Conners—he has to get permission, but he’s the contact for the hits. He knows all the hitters, and the management likes it that way. Something comes to him direct instead of them, that’s all right with them. It’s more distance from the deed, and as long as things get done, they’re happy. And now you’ve killed off some of their help. It’s not that they care about them, it’s that they don’t like that disrespect part, the loss of that dope money, and they can’t have you two dropping their soldiers like cigarette butts.”