Stubbs was red-eyed, queasy, tired. He’d had a very, very bad couple of days, but it would all pay off when he found the drugs and the money. He could turn things around pretty quick then.

What he really needed was sleep. But not now. Not yet. He had to see where Morgan was going in that big black Mercedes. He leaned over, popped open the glove box, and found the half-empty bottle of caffeine pills. They came in handy when Stubbs was on all-night stakeouts.

He rubbed his balls. They still ached. That bitch had kicked him good, but he’d fixed her.

He popped two of the caffeine pills, washed them down with his last beer. Okay, Professor Morgan, you lead. Deke Stubbs is on your ass like shit on a shoe.

twenty-nine

On a hard-packed dirt road under a gray sky just north of Fumbee, Red Zach cursed an underling on his tiny cell phone. Zach wanted answers and he wanted them yesterday.

“I asked you who was in charge of this one-horse shithole,” Zach yelled. “I got to know who to deal with.”

Red Zach had been around long enough to know the score. You don’t go deep-sixing motherfuckers on somebody else’s turf without permission, and you don’t go poking your nose into the local drug economy without paying respects to the chief. It was like a franchise thing. He could kill Jenks. That was okay. Jenks was one of his boys run amok. But shit was getting out of hand, and he needed to speak to the local boss, whoever the fuck that was.

“I told you,” Zach yelled into the cell phone. “If Jenks is going to unload my merchandise around here, I got to know where he’s going.”

“Okay, boss,” said the voice on the other end. “But Fumbee, Oklahoma, ain’t even on the damn map. It’s in some kinda fucking no-man’s-land between Tulsa and Fayetteville. I don’t think it’s anybody’s turf.”

“I don’t want to hear that shit,” Zach said. “You call back with a name.” He slapped the phone shut and looked at his boys down from St. Louis.

When Red Zach had called for reinforcements, he’d asked for a dozen of the meanest, bad-ass motherfuckers available. It had been a long time since he’d gathered this much muscle together in one place, but he was dog-determined to finish this shit quick.

He hadn’t been this pissed in a long damn time, and it was all because of Harold Jenks. He’d looked out for the boy, brought him along, gave him all the breaks. Zach had plans to make something out of him. But Jenks stabbed him in the back. Nobody but nobody fucked with Red Zach. The fact it was somebody he trusted made it double-worse.

Zach looked at the razor-thin man directly across from him. Maurice Arnold. He was a light-skinned black man, shaved head, bright, straight teeth, alert brown eyes. He wore a simple gray suit and a muted red tie. He looked like somebody’s tax attorney, but Zach knew Maurice was the baddest, cruelest motherfucker this side of the Mississippi. He’d led the pack of reinforcements down from St. Louis. He was the guy Zach called whenever he wanted to turn a problem into a violent, screaming, smoking mess. Maurice didn’t just make problems go away. He made them sorry they’d ever decided to be problems.

“Maurice, I want Jenks and any motherfuckers with him to pay the price. You catch my drift?”

Maurice sat with his hands folded in his lap. He nodded politely. “I understand, sir. Leave them to me.”

“I got a man watching that redneck’s trailer, but they ain’t been back,” Zach said.

Zach’s cell phone rang, and he flipped it open. “Talk.”

“I got a name for you, boss.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Moses Duncan.”

“Affiliated?”

“Nope. Freelance. Buys out of Tulsa for resale around Fumbee, especially the campus, but he don’t answer to nobody.”

“We’ll see about that,” Zach said. “Where is he?”

The voice on the other end gave him directions. “A farm outside town.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“He’s a white guy.”

“You think I give a shit?” Zach said. “What, you think I’m a racist?”

“No, boss.”

“Damn straight. I’ll own his shit if he’s black, white, green, or polka-dot. I’m an equal opportunity motherfucker.”

The fifth floor of Albatross Hall was pissing off Harold Jenks.

He’d been going stir-crazy stuck up there with DelPrego and the whacked-out old professor, so he’d risked sneaking across campus to the student union for a milk shake and a newspaper.

Jenks had gone through the local section and the police blotter, but apparently nobody had found the dead body at DelPrego’s trailer. Jenks didn’t know if that was good news or not.

At least the milk shake had been good.

But upon climbing back up to the fifth floor of Albatross Hall, he’d found himself completely turned around. He’d listened for the music like DelPrego had instructed, but all was quiet. Jenks had concluded some crack-head architect son of a bitch was having a big laugh somewhere. Jenks was all turned around.

He stood, scratched his head, cursed again.

Then he heard it.

Slow footsteps and metal dragging. A peculiar rhythm. Step, step, drag. Step, step, drag. Jenks froze. What the hell was that? He strained to listen, tried to determine from which direction it was coming. That shit’s creeping me out. It reminded him of this Frankenstein movie he’d seen as a kid. It had scared the shit out of him. No matter where the people ran, the Frankenstein kept coming. And he dragged one foot behind him, made that scraping noise.

Except this dragging was harsh and metallic.

So Jenks stood there, waited for the metal robot Frankenstein of Albatross Hall to come eat his lunch.

It was the custodian.

Jenks exhaled relief. What was that janitor dude’s name again? Valentine had introduced them. Brad Eubanks. Valentine seemed to have some kind of arrangement with the man. Jenks didn’t pretend to understand completely, but he thought the relationship between the old professor and the custodian might somehow be symbiotic.

Symbiotic. Where the hell had he picked up that word? Jenks’s face twisted with a wry smile. Maybe college was rubbing off.

Eubanks saw him from the other end of the hall, waved him over. “Hey, now.” A deep country accent, voice harsh with the twang. “Come gimmee a hand with this, young feller.” Eubanks was dragging a long, thick metal pipe. Gleaming brass.

“What is that?” Jenks called.

“Fireman’s pole. Come help.”

Jenks jogged down to him, grabbed the other end of the twenty-foot pole. It was heavier than he’d thought. He grunted, tucked it up under his arm. “What’s this for?”

Eubanks’s laughter segued into a wheezing grunt. “A little project for the professor.”

They waddled down the hall. Jenks started to sweat. He asked, “What’s his deal anyway?”

“Valentine?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s crazy,” Eubanks said. “Oh, not in a bad way. Not dangerous-like. I think he just likes it on campus. I think he’s unhappy with the rest of the world. Here on campus he’s an important genius.”

“How’s that?”

“Pulitzer Prize.”

“Oh.” Jenks had heard of that one.

“Personally, I can’t see it,” Eubanks said. “I borrowed some of his poetry books, ones he’d wrote hisself. Do you know them poems he wrote don’t even rhyme?”

Jenks started to say something, bit his tongue.

“I mean, hell now, I may not be college educated, but I know poems should rhyme. Any first-grader knows that.”

The custodian kept yakking about it. But the more Eubanks talked, the more Jenks didn’t want to listen, the more he felt the distance.