“I thought I might have seen him earlier today.”
“Better visit your optometrist. Chester Wimple was blown all over a café with a fifty-cal in Venezuela eight months ago.”
“Must be a mistake.”
“The guys I got this from use DNA.”
“I appreciate your time,” I said, my mouth dry. “How you doing with the program?”
“I haven’t slept since the fall of Saigon,” he replied. “Thanks for bringing it up.”
• • •
AT SEVEN-THIRTY THE next morning Helen Soileau was at my door.
“What’s the haps?” I said through the screen.
“Need to get you on the clock,” she said. “I killed the IA beef. How about it, Pops?”
I pushed the screen open. “Come in
.” I let her walk ahead of me into the kitchen. I took the Silex carafe and two cups off the counter and sat down at the breakfast table. “Why the change of heart?”
“I was wrong,” she replied.
“I held back information I should have reported.”
“And done Texas’s dirty work for them. I probably wouldn’t have dimed Tillinger either.” She took my badge out of her coat pocket and set it on the table. It was gold and inset with blue letters.
“Something hit the fan?” I said.
“I need every swinging dick on the line.”
“You know how to say it, Helen.”
“In or out?”
I palmed my badge but didn’t put it into my pocket. “I had a visitor in the early a.m. yesterday. Chester Wimple, alias Smiley.”
“He was just passing through on his way to killing someone?”
“He was standing under the trees in the backyard. He left in a pirogue.”
“I don’t want to listen to this,” she said.
“It gets worse. I called a friend who was CIA for forty years. He says Smiley was shredded into dog food by a fifty-caliber eight months ago.”
“I don’t know which story is worse, yours or your friend’s.”
“Take it any way you want. I told Smiley he was unwelcome. I unloaded my weapon in front of him. I watched him paddle his pirogue down to the drawbridge. The CIA isn’t made up of stupid people.”
I saw the heat go out of her face.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay, what?”
“Maybe it explains something.”