“And, Dale, Rupe may not stop at arm-twisting, either. While he was in the DA’s office, he cut a lot of deals with felonious types. I know of one who works for him now as a repo man. Guy carries a chain saw as his persuader, and I kid you not.”
Dale took Haymaker’s implied warning to heart. He would put nothing past the former prosecutor. “I appreciate you telling me, Hay.”
“You covered my back more than once, and I don’t forget stuff like that.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
“You mean about the car? No sweat. My son will give me the money.”
“You sure?”
“The little prick is always happy to oblige. Gives him an opportunity to remind me of what a lousy provider I am and always have been.”
Before they hung up, Haymaker promised to call him with updates as they happened. Dale tossed his cell phone onto the metal TV tray, lit a cigarette, and drew hard on it as he stared thoughtfully into the half-empty bottle of whiskey.
Rupe Collier was afraid his life was about to be derailed. Well, good. It was about time the son of a bitch realized the consequences of the deal he’d made with the devil. Dale had been living with them for eighteen years.
The loaded pistol was a lure he could barely resist.
But for one more night, he did.
“Come again?”
“Atlanta.”
“Texas or GA?”
“Georgia.”
Dent might just as well have told Gall he’d gone to Timbuktu. He was sitting on the edge of the hotel room bed, his elbows on his thighs, staring down at the toes of his boots. Realizing it was the posture of a child preparing for a parental lecture, he straightened up. “We thought—”
“We? Who’s the second party? Or don’t I already know?”
“Are you going to keep interrupting? Because if you are, I’m going to hang up.”
Dent could imagine his mentor clamping down hard on his cigar and scowling.
“Thank you,” Dent said politely, then with emphasis, “Bellamy and I are trying to reconstruct that Memorial Day. Who did what, and when.”
“What brought this on?”
Dent told him about Van Durbin’s accosting them and what the subject of tomorrow’s column was going to be. “It doesn
’t matter whether or not there’s any substance to the question. Just posing it implies that something ran afoul. He’s a weasel. Has this nasty little grin that suggests he’s seen your mother nekkid. I could break him in half. You could break him in half. But his column is famous nationwide, and, with just a little finessing of the facts, he can do a body either a lot of good or a lot of harm.”
“This situation just gets better and better.”
“Tell me.” Dent sighed.
“So why did you sign on for more crap? Get away from her.”
“I told you, we’re trying—”
“Yeah, yeah, but didn’t she cover the details of that day in her book?”
“There’s a problem with that.”
Gall harrumphed. “I can hardly wait. Lay it on me.”