Virgil said, “What do you do for a living?”
“I buy and sell,” Roberts said.
“A fence?”
“That’d be a goddamn uncharitable way to look at it,” Roberts said.
“Okay, well, this is the way it is,” Virgil said. “I’ll tell you who I’m looking at, but if the word gets around town, and it goes back to you, I’ll bust you, and I’ll fix it so Davenport can’t save your ass.”
Roberts tipped his head and said, “I can keep quiet.”
Virgil: “I’ve been told that Jimmy Sharp was hired to kill Ag O’Leary Murphy by Dick Murphy. Murphy stands to inherit three-quarters of a million.”
Roberts whistled and said, distractedly, “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“I saw Dick shooting nine-ball down to Roseanne’s Billiards last night, and he seemed pretty goddamned cheerful for somebody whose old lady just got killed.”
“That right?”
“Pretty goddamned cheerful,” Roberts said.
“This is not owned by Roseanne Bush, is it?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah, she owns pretty much every low-life place in town,” Roberts said. “You know her?”
“No, but I heard about her. That a lot of bad people hook up around her.”
“She might find a killer for you,” Roberts said. His eyes narrowed in thought, and he asked, “If you think Dick hired Jimmy Sharp. . why are you looking for another killer?”
“Because Sharp’s kind of a dumbass, I’m told, and I’m not sure he’d be the first person you’d go to, if you were looking for somebody to do a good job on it.”
Roberts said, “Huh. You’re smarter than you look.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, if Dick was gonna sneak up on somebody and ask that question, ‘Would you do a killing for me?’ I bet the first person he’d ask would be Randy White. They played football together, and they hang out some. Randy was a linebacker and a mean little jerk. He’d try to hurt people. Everybody knew it, but the coach is just as mean as he was. A fuckin’ rattlesnake. There was rumors he’d slip Randy ten bucks for every starter he’d take out of a game. I’m not sure I’d believe that-it’s just too goddamned wrong.”
“And White is still around town?”
“Oh, yeah. He works for the county road department,” Roberts said. “Digging holes, filling them in. Runs a snowplow in the winter. He runs with a crowd that’s too fast for him. Out to the Indian casinos and such. Needs money all the time.”
“You ever done any business with him?”
Roberts showed a thin smile. “Maybe. County’s always got some surplus equipment floating around.”
White was the only name that Roberts really had. “I keep thinking of all your qualifications,” he said. “There are two or three people around town who might kill for money, but every one of them’s a bigger fool than Jimmy. I can’t see Dick Murphy talking to them about it.”
“What are the chances that Dick Murphy would do it himself?” Virgil asked
Roberts laughed, almost a bark, sharply cut off. “Zero,” he said. “Dick’s one of those smarmy little assholes who goes greasing around town, spreading trouble. If you want somebody to goad a couple drunks into fighting each other, Dick’s your boy. He’s a real friendly sort, when you first meet him, but the longer you know him, the less you like him. Just like his old man.”
“Maybe I oughta be looking at his old man.”
Roberts shook his head: “Naw. His old man wouldn’t give five seconds to Jimmy Sharp. Or to Ag O’Leary’s money, either. He doesn’t need her money, and he sure as hell is too smart to try to kill her for it. Nope. It’s Dicky you want.”
Virgil left him in the bird sanctuary, peering up into the trees with a pair of binoculars. He wasn’t, he said, looking for anything in particular, which seemed odd, but then Virgil didn’t know much about watching birds. Instead of educating himself, he went back to town, to talk to Roseanne Bush.
Bush was a rugged-looking young woman; dark-eyed and dark-haired, her hair streaked with silver and red like tinsel; she’d never be called pretty, but might be called magnetic. Virgil found her sitting in her tattoo parlor throwing darts at a target face on the men’s room door. Her shop smelled like patchouli oil and leather, and a smoker’s haze stuck on the windows.
Virgil told her the same story he’d told Roberts, and she said, “I’m the same age as Ag was, two years older than Dick, and let me tell you something about little Dicky.” She pulled at her bottom lip for a moment, as if pulling her head together, and then she said, “He didn’t exactly rape me.”
Virgil said, “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly. We were a year out of high school, and we were drinking in my old man’s bar after hours, and Dicky kept pouring it down me. . hell, it was free. . and he is a good-looking thing. . and, he just did it to me,” she said. “I kind of think I resisted, but I was no virgin, and I kind of think I led him on. . but I think I tried to say no, and he did it anyway. The problem is, I’m not sure of any of that ’cause I was too damn drunk. But I’ll tell you what: I haven’t gotten drunk since then.”
“So it might have been a rape, and even if it wasn’t, he’s an asshole.”
“Yeah, that’d be fair,” she said. “So’s his old man. Anyway, he’s got this friend, Randy White. .”
White was the only name she had, though, like Roberts, she said there were a few more dumbasses who’d probably agree to do a killing, but nobody that anyone would trust.
“You think Murphy would have trusted Jimmy Sharp?”
“Oh. . yeah. They knew each other. I saw them shooting pool a couple of times, but what passed between them, I don’t know. Jimmy wasn’t book-learning smart, but when he decided to do something, he’d get it done, somehow. You ever know a guy like that? He’d come up with one bad idea after another, and then he’d execute them?”
Virgil thought of a couple cops he knew, and said, “Yeah, unfortunately.” Then, “But Dick would trust Jimmy.”
“Jimmy would not squeal on Dick, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s too proud to do that.”
“So Jimmy would have been a possibility. Along with this White,” Virgil said.
“I think Randy would have been the first choice, but yeah, Jimmy would have been a possibility.”
When they finished talking, he asked her about her businesses, and she said she currently ran the tattoo parlor, a billiards parlor and bar, a motel, and a tavern. “My business plan calls for me to take the supermarket in three years-it’s in trouble, but I think I could make a go of it. Then the bank. Once I got the bank. .” She lifted a hand, then closed it into a fist. “I’ll have the whole town right here.”
“Jesus Christ, remind me not to move here,” Virgil said.
She laughed and asked, “You want a tattoo? I could give you a nice little BCA, with a dagger through it, and some drips of blood running down your arm.”
“But it’d hurt,” Virgil said.
“Just a little bit.”
“I try to avoid pain, in all its forms,” Virgil said.
Randy White.
He asked Bush where White might be found, and she said, “Probably down at the county garage, out on County Road 2. He doesn’t work real hard.”
Virgil went down to the county garage, which turned out to be a Korean War-era Quonset hut, where he found a supervisor named Stan. Stan said that White was probably out on County 4, down past Stillsville, throwing roadkill into the ditch. “He’s supposed to bury anything smaller than a deer, but it’d be a cold day in hell before you’d find him doing that. Just throw it in the weeds is good enough for him. That is, if he’s not sitting in a beer joint somewhere, sneaking a beer. . Uh, you’re not related, are you?”
“No, no, just want to talk to him.”
