Only this last bothered Red a bit: the man, like his father, was a true hero, bold, smart, violent and aggressive. Such men were harder and harder to find; possibly Bob was the last one left in America, outside a few Army Rangers or Green Berets. Red respected heroism but he was not sentimental about it. If it came at him, it must be destroyed and what was accomplished must be preserved. It was that simple.
The phone rang.
“Bama.”
“Mr. Bama?”
It was a Bama lieutenant who was officially on the books as a security consultant to Redline Trucking, but actually served as Red’s troubleshooter in all aspects of communications that his enterprises demanded.
“Yeah, go ahead, Will.”
“Sir, you know we broke down the calls from the motel out to the army archives and that JFP Technology place for you?”
“Yes, I do, Will. That was fine work.”
“Well, sir, I got to thinking that if this boy is smart as we think he is, he wouldn’t use a traceable phone for a private call.”
“Uh-huh,” said Red.
“He’d use a pay phone. So I dropped by that hotel yesterday and I took down the numbers of all the pay phones in the lobby.”
“Yes,” said Red, wondering where this was going.
“Then I designed a software program for the phone company mainframe—you know, I can still get into their system.”
“Yes.”
“And it turned out on one of them phones, there was a collect call to Ajo, Arizona.”
“Hmmmm,” said Red.
“So anyway, I backchecked the number to find the address. You said he was from Arizona. Well, sir, that’s our boy’s home. He’s got a wife and a daughter there. You know, sir, I know how important this is to you. But you could now use that to strike at him. The wife, the little girl.”
Red nodded.
“Thank you, sir. You want me to alert the boys?”
“I’ll do that,” said Red. “Don’t you worry.”
He hung up.
It was appealing: he could strike at the family. Now he really had him.
But it was a no-brainer.
He thought of his own little squirmers and the warm and safe place he’d made for them. No, we don’t do families. It isn’t about families. We leave the families out of it. The families aren’t on the board.
He wasn’t an idealist but—he just didn’t do families. It was his only rule.
36
“What’s eating you?” Russ finally said. “You’re pissed. I can tell. Something’s going on.”
Bob, typically, said nothing. He looked like Achilles again, and Russ thought how the severe planes of his face would fit so appropriately under the bronze of a fierce Greek helmet, scarred from much action outside the walls of Troy.
“You learned something,” Russ said again.
Bob breathed out a wisp of vapor, like liquid anger, possibly enough to allow him to live another moment or two before the demons inside chewed him to pieces. He had an ulcer of anger like a gigantic leach sucking fluid from his soul.
“I ran into a neighbor lady,” he finally said. “I couldn’t get rid of her. And then she said, ‘I wonder where that wonderful deputy is? I’m surprised he isn’t here.’ Seems our boy Duane Peck done been hanging out in Sam’s neighborhood. She saw his car parked there two, three days running and later saw Sam driving ’cross town, Duane right behind. We gonna have us a chat with Duane real soon.”
“You, ought to reconsider that,” said Russ.
“What for?” Bob demanded, flashing a Bronze Age glare at Russ.
“If you call him out and kill him, you’re a murderer. What does that prove?”
“It proves that Duane Peck is dead.”
“But it doesn’t get the man or men who killed your father, for whom we both believe Duane works. You have to wait until Duane moves against you. Then you do him and it’s righteous; nobody cares, you go home to YKN4 and Julie. Put your anger aside until it’s time.”
Bob stared out into the darkness. His eyes narrowed into something pale and bitter and Russ knew he was looking at the pure soul of a killer. It was the first time he’d ever recognized how much anger smoldered in Bob and what terrible things the man was capable of.
But Bob got himself under some kind of control.
“We’ll deal with Peck when the goddamn time comes,” he finally said.
“Good, because I have something to work on.”
“What’s that?”
Russ told him about Jed Posey’s parole.
Bob wanted to know what she’d said. Where had the information come from? Was it tainted? Was it a trap?
Well, no, it seemed to arise spontaneously. Someone in the black community had found out about it. They weren’t even
“How would the blacks find out?” Bob wanted to know.
“You know, they talk among themselves. A black prison guard tells his wife that goddamned Jed Posey has been paroled; his wife tells her sister tells her friend tells her husband tells his brother; it goes like a telegram; and down here they probably hear faster than anyone. It’s how an oppressed community would survive; it would develop extremely refined communications and intelligence skills.”
“But who
“I don’t know. It’s lost, I guess.”
“It can’t be lost,” Bob said irritably.
“Do you want to go house-to-house knocking on doors in Blue Eye?” Russ said in exasperation. “Look, it’s simple. This guy is one of two people left alive who saw your father on his last day. Maybe his testimony is important. They searched for Shirelle Parker. They were together for, near as we can figure it out, close to three hours. That’s a long time. Maybe he can remember.”
Bob just didn’t like it.
“Why now? Why release him now?”
“He’s been in prison since 1962. That’s over thirty years. It was time. Do you want to go down to Tucker tomorrow and make inquiries as to why? Do you want me to call the paper”—the paper! Russ thought. What about that job?—“and see what their cop guy says?
It was like arguing with a stubborn old man. Bob never agreed or disagreed, he simply affected a blank look that stood for a strategic retreat while he reconsidered his options. Nothing ever budged him except himself and he
