“Uh-huh,” I say.
“For real, man,” he says, growing upset. “I ain’t seen the dude since he and Sam drove into Cargill’s to get rid of their—” He stops.
Now I’m the one staring at him. “Did you say Cargill?” I ask. “Brad Cargill?”
Gardner is trying to decide what he should say, and a saying of Susannah’s pops into my head: He looks like a monkey doing a math problem. “No,” he says, unconvincingly.
“You said they drove into Cargill’s to get rid of something,” I say. And then understanding drops like a quarter in a slot machine. Among his various enterprises, Cargill runs chop shops where stolen cars get stripped for parts. Bridges mentioned Donny Wharton’s car yesterday. “They were driving a cherry-red Camaro convertible,” I say.
Gardner’s eyes bug out. “How’d you know?”
“I know a lot, Jay. I know that you and Bridges got busted for trafficking. I know they had to go to Cargill to take care of their car. And I’m guessing you told Marisa where Bridges was. But I need to know what else she talked to you about. And I need to know where Donny is.”
He leans in close now, his features filling my laptop screen so I almost flinch. I can see his face is starting to gather a sheen. “She asked me if I knew him, okay?” he says. “About where he was. I told her I didn’t know anything, and I don’t. And I wish I hadn’t even told her that. We’re done, man.” He looks to the side. “I’m done, Officer.”
“Wait,” I say. “Tell me—” Then the video feed cuts off, replaced by a message from the Fulton County Jail, thanking me for using their video service.
I sit back in my chair, frustrated. Marisa had already known something about Donny when she went to talk to Gardner. And she’d known about Bridges, too. She’d tracked both down like some sort of investigative journalist. Why she’d done it was due to her fixation with me, with what had happened to me. The question is, how did she know about those men in the first place? I think she died because she poked around in my life, just like Bridges died because she went to talk with him. Or because I had.
All bets are on Donny. And now Donny might be coming for me, or Susannah. And I know of one person who might know where he is.
I look at the time—it’s over two and a half hours until I have to meet with the detectives and Johnny Shaw—and then I close my laptop, stick it in my workbag, and head to my car, thinking about the easiest route to Brad Cargill’s garage.
ATL BODY SHOP is hardly different from when Frankie and I were last here to exchange envelopes with Cargill. The parking lot is still cracked with patches of gravel, and the building itself is still white, most of the bay doors pulled down. The maroon Honda with the windshield that Cargill redesigned with a wrench is gone, replaced by an equally dilapidated silver Ford Escort.
I walk into the nearest open bay, where a green Dodge is up on a lift. The concrete floor is oil-stained, the tangled snarl of a cord crossing from a compressor to the Dodge, where a man in a gray coverall is removing the tires with an air wrench. He looks up at me. “Yeah?” he says.
“Cargill here?” I ask.
The man puts the air wrench down on a workbench and grabs a rag from his back pocket to wipe his hands. “Who’s asking?”
“Salvation Army,” I say. “Is he here?”
The man stops wiping his hands, replaces the rag in his back pocket, and considers me for a minute. “In his office,” he says with a jerk of his head, indicating the far end of the garage.
I nod and walk down the length of the garage, keeping to the side closest to the bay doors. Half the bays are empty, but there are some cars on the lifts and I want to keep out of the way. At the far end, someone put up Sheetrock across half of the last bay, put in a plate-glass window and a door, and turned the space into an office. Through the window I see Brad Cargill sitting at a desk, talking on a phone. There’s one other mechanic at this end of the garage, bent over the open hood of a GMC pickup, and he glances up at me as I pass and walk up to the office.
“—don’t give a shit what he says, he needs to show me the parts,” Cargill is saying into the phone, as rawboned and pale as ever, a brand-new Atlanta United cap pushed back on his head, his feet in heavy work boots resting on his desk. He glances at me and continues talking into his phone. “I’m not ordering bad parts from anybody. Tell him that.” He hangs up and leans back in his chair. “Help you?”
I stand there and let him figure it out. He squints in concentration, and then his eyebrows rise. “Well, well, Gavin Lester’s nephew,” he says. “All grown up. Took a sec, but the red hair did it. This is a surprise. Need help with your car?”
“Donny Wharton,” I say.
Cargill frowns politely. “Sorry, who?”
“The guy who needed your help with a cherry-red Camaro convertible about twelve years back.”
He’s still frowning, but now he smiles. It’s like watching a piranha try to be friendly. “I’ve fixed lots of Camaros,” he says.
“He didn’t want you to fix it. He wanted you to make it disappear.”
Cargill’s smile broadens. “Why, that sounds like you’re suggesting something illegal. We don’t do that kind of thing here.”
I hold my arms out to the sides. “I’m not wearing a wire,” I say. “Feel free to check.”
Cargill brings his feet off his desk, the work boots stamping the floor with a thump, and stands. “George!” he shouts. He’s still smiling, although it’s a little
