“Who the hell are you?” the man shrilled from the ground.
“The very question I was going to ask you.”
The man swallowed, recovering slightly, and sat up. “Get your goddamned light out of my face.”
Pendergast lowered the light.
“Now who the deuce do you think you are, scaring decent people half to death?”
“We have yet to establish decency,” said Pendergast. “Pray rise and identify yourself.”
“Mister, you can pray all you like and it don’t mean shit.” He rose to his feet anyway, brushing the leaves and twigs out of his beard and hair. Then he hawked up an enormous gob of phlegm and shot it into the darkness. He wiped his beard and mouth with a filthy hand, front and back, and spat again.
Pendergast removed his shield and passed it before the man’s face.
The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed again. He laughed. “FBI? Never would’ve guessed it.”
“Special Agent Pendergast.” He closed the leather case with a snap and it disappeared into his jacket.
“I don’t talk to FBI.”
“Before you make any more rash declarations which will cause you to lose face later, you should know you have a choice. You can have an informal chat with me here . . .” He paused.
“Or?”
Pendergast smiled suddenly, his thin lips stretching to expose a row of perfect white teeth. But the effect, in the glow of the flashlight, was anything but friendly.
The man removed a twisted chaw from his pocket, screwed a piece off, and packed it into his cheek. “Shit,” he said, and spat.
“May I ask your name?” Pendergast asked.
The silence stretched on for a minute, then two.
“Hell,” the man said at last. “I guess having a name’s no crime, is it? Gasparilla. Lonny Gasparilla. Can I have my gun back now?”
“We shall see.” Pendergast bobbed the beam of his light toward the bloody squirrels. “Is that what you were doing up here? Hunting?”
“I ain’t hanging around the Mounds for the view.”
“Do you have a residence nearby, Mr. Gasparilla?”
The man barked a laugh. “That’s a funny one.” Again, when there was no reply from Pendergast, he jerked his head to one side. “I’m camped over yonder.”
Pendergast picked up the shotgun, broke it open, ejected the spent shells, and handed it empty to Gasparilla. “Show me, if you please.”
Five minutes of walking brought them to the edge of the trees and into the sea of corn. Gasparilla ducked into a row and they followed it down a dusty, beaten path. A few more minutes brought them to a cottonwood grove that lined the banks of Medicine Creek. The air here smelled of moisture, and there was the faint sound of water purling over a bed of sand. Ahead was the reddish glow of a campfire, built against a clay bank. A big iron pot sat atop the fire, bubbling, smelling of onions, potatoes, and peppers.
Gasparilla picked some pieces of wood off a pile and banked them beside the coals. Flames rose, illuminating the little campsite. There was a greasy-looking tent, a log for a seat, an abandoned wooden door set on more logs to make a table.
Gasparilla plucked the bundle of squirrels off his shoulder and dropped them on the makeshift table. Then he took out his knife and went to work, slicing one open, pulling out the guts and tossing them aside. And then, with one sharp tug, he tore off the skin. A series of swift chops took off the head, paws, and tail; a few more hacks quartered the animal, and it went into the simmering pot. The process for each squirrel took less than twenty seconds.
“What are you doing here?” Pendergast asked.
“On tour,” said the man.
“Tour?”
“Tool sharpening. Make two rounds of my territory in the warm months. Go south to Brownsville for the winter. You got it, I sharpen it, from chainsaws to combine rotors.”
“How do you get around?”
“Pickup.”
“Where’s it parked?”
Gasparilla gave a final savage chop, tossed the last squirrel into the pot. Then he jerked his head toward the road. “Over there, if you want to check it out.”
“I plan to.”
“They know me in town. I ain’t never been on the wrong side of the law, you can ask the sheriff. I work for a living, same as you. Only I don’t go sneaking around in the dark, shining lights in people’s faces and scaring them half to death.” He threw some parched lima beans into the pot.
“If, as you say, they know you in town, why do you camp out here?”
“I like a little elbow room.”
