'That's my job. These men are here to ask you a few questions,' Dr. Dumas said. 'I'll let them introduce themselves.'
Dr. Dumas went out.
The man in the long coat said, 'I'm Jack Divit.' The man from the sheriff's office didn't introduce himself. He looked around the room like he was bored.
Divit said, 'I'm with the FBI. Sheriff’s office has a statement from you, and now that you're feeling better, we'd like one too. You don't mind going through it again, do you?'
I took a shallow breath and started telling it the way Leonard and I agreed to tell it.
'My ex-wife. Trudy Fawst. She came around and said she had a job for me and Leonard. She wanted us to recover a boat for her and some other people and if we did they'd pay us some money.'
'They tell you why they wanted to recover the boat?'
'No. It didn't matter. It was a job. We recovered the boat and it had lots of money in it in watertight canisters. They didn't want to pay us then and they took us with them, said they'd let us go later. Turned out they were going to use the money to buy guns so they could be revolutionaries, you know. Silly idea. One of their bunch, guy named Paco, was out to make his own score and he hooked them up with a guy named Soldier, woman named Angel. There weren't any guns and Trudy didn't bring any money along, except for five thousand dollars. She said the rest was at Leonard's and we ended up going back there, only there wasn't any money and things got out of hand. '
'What about this money?' the man from the sheriffs department said. 'You say you saw some money, then there wasn't but the five thousand.'
'I don't know. There looked to be more than five thousand. I wasn't counting. If there was more, I don't know what happened to it.''
'This guy, Soldier,' Divit said. 'He tells a different story.'
'Does he? How is old Soldier?'
'Physically, pretty good,' Divit said. 'But you see, he's a boy we been wanting to see for a long time. He's got a record.'
'Imagine that.'
'He's got some bad things to his credit. Drugs. Arms. Murder. Rape. Been busy. This Angel that was with him, she wasn't exactly for the church choir either. But still, Soldier tells it different. He says there's some money. Says it was some kind of holdup money this Howard fella knew about. Says you were all trying to score.'
'I told you what I know,' I said. 'I don't know where the money came from originally or what they did with it. Howard claimed it was buried on Leonard's place, but Trudy, before she died, told me different.'
'She told you where it was?' Divit said.
'Nope. She said it wasn't on Leonard's place. That was just a lie she told Soldier to stall. You'd seen this guy in action, you'd have lied to him too if you thought it would save you. He's a real animal. But the bottom line is she told me it was gone forever.'
'What do you think she meant by that, Mr. Collins?'
'I got the impression she was trying to tell me it was destroyed. She might have been out of her head then. She'd had a nail driven through her hand, lots of shock, you know.'
'Yeah,' Divit said. 'That shock's bad stuff. But what Soldier says, it matches some facts. And this Paco guy, he turns out to be a big-time revolutionary, head of the Mechanics. We thought he was dead since way back.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah. And Soldier says this Paco told him this money was from a bank robbery some years back. Guy named McCall headlined it. Howard, he was in prison with this McCall. Lot of ties, huh? This money, the five thousand we recovered at your friend's house, it's clean money. Means it might not be stolen. Means too it might have been laundered and can't be traced. And Soldier, amount he's claiming Paco said there was, is a lot more than was robbed from that bank. Dirty business all the way around.'
'I got this feeling,' I said, 'Soldier might tell a story.'
'That occurred to me,' Divit said. 'Also occurred to me those bank officials might story some.'
'A banker lie?'
'Yeah, who'd believe that?' Divit said. 'Then you're saying you don't think we got cause to believe Soldier's story?'
'Not all of it. Sounds to me he's trying to work me and Leonard into this for vengeful purposes. You wouldn't want to take the word of a scum like Soldier over my word, would you?'
'You got a little record yourself,' the man from the Sheriffs office said.
'Forget that,' Divit said. 'That's no kind of record.'
The man from the sheriff’s office didn't look offended. He got out his pocket knife and went to cleaning his nails.
Divit paused and looked me over. 'Listen, Collins. Your friend, the war hero, Pine, he tells it like you tell it. I guess that's a better story than the one Soldier's telling. But if that money turns up, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?'
'You'd be the first,' I said. 'We going to trial for anything?'
'You don't end up in the middle of a slaughterhouse like that and not have to do a lot of talking. But you got a good case for self-defense. You'll be loose in a few days. Get you a pretty good ambulance chaser, and you'll do all right.'
