Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“You want a Ding Dong?”

“Not right now,” R.C. said, and fitted one end of his handcuffs onto the man’s left wrist and snicked the ratchet into the locking mechanism. “Mind if I call you Noie?”

“I’ve answered to worse.”

“You have a friend who drives a Trans Am that has Michelin tires on it?”

“Can’t say as I do.”

“Where’s Preacher Collins at, Noie?”

The man squinted thoughtfully and scratched at an insect bite on the back of his neck with his free hand. “Who?” he said.

“YOU’RE NOT GOING to believe this,” Maydeen said, standing in Hackberry’s doorway.

He looked up from his desk and waited.

“R.C. says he’s got Noie Barnum hooked up in the back of his cruiser,” she said.

Hackberry stared at her blankly.

“He says Barnum walked into a convenience store down by the four-lane,” she said. “He’d hitched a ride to have lunch there.”

“How does R.C. know it’s Barnum?”

“He says the guy looks just like his photo, except he’s a little leaner. He’s got a limp and maybe has some broken ribs.”

“The guy admits he’s Noie Barnum?”

“R.C. didn’t say. He just says it’s him.”

“What about Jack Collins?”

“R.C. said there were Michelin tire tracks where Collins’s car was parked yesterday. I didn’t get it all, Hack. Want me to notify the FBI?”

“No.”

“You don’t?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I did. How about losing the tone?”

He stood up from his desk, staring out the window into the brilliance of the day, at the wind whipping the flag on the pole, at the hard blueness of the sky above the hills. His right hand opened and closed at his side. “Tell R.C. to bring him through the back.”

“Hack?”

“What is it?”

“You always say we do it by the numbers.”

“What about it?”

“Pam told me about you almost shoving a broken pool cue down a bartender’s throat in that Mexican cantina.”

“R.C.’s life was hanging in the balance. Why are you bringing this up?”

“I could have done the same thing to the bartender, maybe worse, and so could Pam or Felix and a few others in the department. We wouldn’t be bothered about it later, either. But we’re not you. All of us know that, even though you don’t. You go against your own nature.”