'Big lizard you mean.'
'Not really.'
He seemed to be thinking that over.
'They keep telling me and I keep forgetting: June's okay, right?'
'She's fine. Back at work as of today.'
I thought he'd fallen off again when he suddenly said, 'You sure you don't want to be sheriff?'
'I'm sure.'
'Smart move,' he said.
I was backing the Chariot out of a visitor's space when the beeper went off. I sat looking at the number while a car and an SUV roughly the size of a tank blared horns at me.
June.
I pulled back into the space, earning a middle-finger salute from the tank driver, and went to use the phone in the hospital lobby.
'How's Don Lee?' June asked.
'Looking good. Still gonna be a while. So what's up?'
'Maybe nothing. Thelma called. From the diner? Said some guy was in there early this morning. Waiting in his car when they came in to open, actually. Just ordered coffee. Then a little later-she and Gillie and Jay were setting up, of course, but she swung by a time or two to check on him-he asked after you. Said he was an old friend.'
Any old friends I was supposed to have, I probably didn't want to see.
'When Thelma said he should check in at the sheriff's office, he said well, he was just passing through, pressed for time. Maybe he'd come back.'
'Thelma say what he looked like?'
'Slight, dark skin and hair, wearing a suit, that was dark too, over a yellow knit shirt buttoned all the way up. Good shoes. Thing was, Thelma said, he didn't ask the kind of questions you'd expect. Where you lived, what you did for a living, all that. What he wanted to know was did you have a family, who your friends were.'
'Thanks, June. He still around?'
'Got back in his car, Thelma said-a dark blue Mustang, I have the license number for you-and drove off in the direction of the interstate.'
'I'm on my way in. See you soon.'
Half an hour later I pulled off the road onto the bluff just above Val's house. The old Ames place, as everyone still called it. Val was up at the state police barracks doing her job, of course, but a dark blue Mustang sat in her drive.
I went down through stands of oak and pecan trees trellised with honeysuckle, through ankle-deep tides of kudzu, to the back door opening onto the kitchen. No one locked doors here, and the kitchen would have no interest for him.
I also had the advantage of knowing the house and its wood floors. Focusing on creaks above, I followed his progress: master bedroom, hallway, second and third bedrooms, bath. Then the tiny tucked-wing room probably meant for servants, and the hallway again.
'You'd be Turner,' he said from the top of the stairs.
One cool guy. Sure of himself and waiting to see which way the wind blew.
I put a round through one knee. He came tumbling down the stairs with left hand and drawn weapon bumping behind him, to the base, where my foot pinned his wrist.
'Apologies first,' I said. 'You're obviously not one of the thick-neck boys. They wouldn't know subtlety if it ran over them, then backed up and had another go.'
'Contract,' he said.
'Who's paying?'
'You know how it works. I can't tell you that.'
I moved the snout of the Police Special vaguely in his direction, a sweeping motion. 'Ankle or knee?'
I used Val's phone to call and tell June I was going to be a little later than I'd thought. Then I drove back to the hospital, one of Val's sheets wrapped tight around my passenger's leg. There wasn't much vessel damage, but joints do get bloody. Ask any orthopedic surgeon.
I was doing just that ('Case like this, we can rebuild the joint from the fragments, adding a bit of plastic here and there- sometimes that's best, staying with the original-or we can replace the whole thing. The newest titanium appliances are remarkable') when Val walked through the double doors.
'June called me.'
I thanked the doctor and said I'd get back to him about cost, responsibility, and so on.
'Not a problem,' he said. 'Mr. Millikin had proof of insurance with him. He's fully covered. Says he wants to be the man of steel. I've got to go finish a procedure up in OR-got interrupted to check him out. Then we'll have him brought up.' Nodding his leave-taking: 'Sheriff. Ma'am.'
'What the hell is going on?' Val asked. 'This guy was in my house? Why was this guy in my house? Who the hell is this guy?'
In the basement we found a place to get coffee, not really a cafeteria, more a kind of commissary, and I walked her through what had happened.
'So, what? He was going to hold me hostage?'
'Or worse. Beyond saying it's a contract, he won't talk.'
'This ties in with what went down in Memphis.'
I nodded.
'Going back in turn to Don Lee's arrest of what's-his-name- Judd Kurtz?'
'Right again.'
'From what little I know about it, farming out enforcement work's not the way these people usually handle things.'
'True enough. What I'm thinking is, given how it went down last time, they've elected for a low profile. Set it up so nothing can be traced back to them.'
Blowing across her coffee cup-absolutely superfluous, since the coffee was at best lukewarm-Val tracked a young woman's progress down the line. An elaborate tattoo scored the nape of her neck. She wore studded boots and sniffed at everything she took from narrow, glass-shuttered shelves. Most of it, she set back.
'These guys have the longest memories of all,' Val said. 'They've got wars that have been going on for centuries. Sooner or later, they don't hear from their scout, they'll figure out it went wrong.'
'We could send them his head.'
Having reached the register, the tattooed young woman stood beaming at the cashier as he spoke, waited, and spoke again. Then the smile went away and she came back into motion.
'Just kidding,' I said. 'You're right. They'll wait a while, but they'll be back. Someone will.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
That night around eleven I got a call. Mabel had routed it through to me at home. I could barely hear the speaker over the jukebox and roar of voices behind.
'This the sheriff?'
'Deputy.'
'Good enough. Reckon you better get on out here.'
'Where's here?'
'The Shack. State Road Forty-one, mile past the old cotton gin.'
I told him I was on my way and hung up.
'Where's Eldon playing these days?' I asked Val.
'Place called The Shack. Why?'
'Thought so. They've got trouble.'
'He okay?'
