“So the fuck what?”

“Ohio was a member of the Union,” I explained quietly. “Not the Confederacy.”

He moved closer, now a half-dozen feet away. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Get outta my face before you get hurt.”

I turned and took the three steps to my truck, opened the door, set the shades inside. Closed the door and turned slowly back to the Beefer.

“What was the capital of the Confederacy, Rebel Boy? It’s what any Southerner would know. I won’t ask you what famous battle was fought in Manassas, Virginia. I won’t ask you the year the war began. Just prove you know enough about the Confederacy to tell me its capital.”

“What is your fucking problem, asshole?”

“Children who play games with symbols they don’t understand.”

“Fuck him up, Beef,” the guy in the truck tittered. “Fuck him up bad.”

I’d had enough of Confucius and headed that way, but was sucker-punched in the side by Beefer, faster than I thought he’d be. His grapefruit-sized fist knocked me sideways.

I dropped to one knee, gasping. He circled around my back to put a kick into my kidney, but I surprised him my diving toward him, grabbing his foot at toe and heel and twisting with all I had. It brought him down like a sack of wet manure and he swung his fist as he fell, the punch hitting my shoulder. I didn’t want to match strength to strength so I blunted two roundhouse swings, head low, looking for the moment.

He jumped into me to try to get his hands around my neck, and for a split-second his fat throat was open. I drove a knife-hand chop into his larynx.

Game’s end. Beefer’s hands fell from my throat and clutched at his own. I stood, resisting the notion to punt his head like a football and instead crouched beside him as he struggled for breath, my hand clutching his hair.

“The war began in 1861,” I whispered into an ear so close to my lips I could have bitten it off. “Manassas was the site of the Battle of Bull Run. The capital was Richmond, as in the state of Virginia. Say it.”

“Hur-ugh,” he rasped.

I yanked his head back, the better to see the fear in his eyes. “The name of the capital of the Confederacy.”

“Rug-mom,” he gargled.

I threw Beef’s head toward the ground and spun to the truck, yanked open the door. The syphilitic hillbilly Confucius held his hands in front of his face, babbling, “No, man, I didn’t disrespect you. No, man…”

I yanked him from the truck and sent him skittering across the parking lot. I tore the flag free of the rear window. I climbed in my truck and drove away, jamming the flag under the seat.

I felt like crying, but didn’t know why. So I started yelling as loud as I could. The feeling passed by the time I reached the next curve.

When I rolled in, at half past seven, Harry was still there, looking through YouTube videos in the side conference room. I wondered if he was checking out more background on Scaler or just playing around.

“Do I smell mint juleps?”

I opened my mouth and showed him a green tongue. “Tic-Tacs,” I slobbered. “Mint flavor.”

He frowned and sniffed the air. “I could have sworn I smelled whiskey, too.”

“Because you associate mint with whiskey,” I explained. “It’s how the mind works. Now sit your ass down and let me tell you what I got solved.”

I conveyed my conversation with Kirkson.

“That begins to explain things,” Harry said, after I’d run through the play-by-play. “Bailes was on the way out. Looking at nothing but pain and a plot in Potter’s Field.”

“A man with no future. Remember when he got quiet? I said to him, ‘It’s over. Set the kid aside and you get to live’?”

Harry thought back. Nodded. “Bailes said, ‘No I don’t.’”

“Bailes knew he was a goner, so he decided to act out some weird-ass fantasy,” I said. “Kirkson inadvertently helped light the fuse by telling Bailes to get his shit together and man up. Then do what he wanted because he was in the no-consequences zone.”

“Why did Bailes get weird? What was the fantasy?”

“No one will ever know what Bailes was thinking. When you’ve got a mama like that and a face like that there ain’t no way to turn out normal.”

“What if there’s more to it, Carson?”

“There isn’t.”

“We’ve got to make absolutely sure.”

“I’ve got two goddamn cases on my plate, Harry. One is a preacher who died while getting whipped as part of his sex life. The other is a delusional man-child who tried to jump out a window with an infant. Both are over. THE PEOPLE ARE DEAD!”

It finally seemed to penetrate Harry’s leaden skull. He thought for a few moments, shifted gears.

“Hardasses like Kirkson never tell cops anything without a trade. How did you get Kirkson to spill?”

I ahemed and told him the story of my on-the-spot creativity with the fake transfer.

“Jesus,” he whispered, jumping up to close the door. “You could have gotten your ass fired. The guard’s ass fired. Why did you take such ridiculous chan—”

“It worked,” I said, waving my hand in the done-with-talking mode. “That’s what’s important. Why don’t you call Clair and ask if she can get a pathologist to run the ripsaw through Bailes tomorrow after Scaler’s funeral so we can confirm the rotten pancreas and file this case under Dying Freak’s Last Wish?”

Harry paused, picked up the phone. I went to the can to take a leak. Washing my hands, I saw a wide red smear on my face, an abrasion from the set-to with Beefer. Harry had looked straight at it and hadn’t mentioned a thing.

When I returned to the meeting room, Harry was gone, a note in his place:

Post on Bailes @ 11.30 a.m. tomorrow. Scaler’s funeral at nine.

I went home, took a couple of Fossie’s sleeping pills, and watched a show about groups of people racing around the world. Everyone was angry at everyone else and I drifted into a rich and welcome sleep as they screamed at one another in an airline terminal in Singapore.

Chapter 23

Scaler’s service was at the Kingdom College chapel. My head was thick with sleep and I arrived late at the department. Harry and I had the misfortune to fall in behind Senator Custis’s motorcade as it traveled the final miles to the campus, four black Yukons book-ended by State Police officers, two on motorcycles, two inside cruisers. Sirens wailed, lights flashed. Senators did not move with stealth.

We kept a distance of a hundred feet behind the parade, careful whenever a clot of folks on the long drive leading to the bounds of Kingdom College held aloft a sign praising Custis. His black Yukon, the last in the quartet, would slow to roll down the smoked black window so the senator could wave and shine his teeth at the onlookers.

After our fifth slow-up in two miles, Harry cranked down our window. I watched as he stuck his face into the oncoming breeze and sniffed. He pulled his head back inside and rolled up the window.

I gave him a what-was-that-about? look.

“Just smelling the self-importance,” he said.

“How thick is it?”

“Like a ham loaf.”

The motorcade turned from the main road to a stretch of two-lane, the final half-mile before crossing into the confines of Kingdom College. A dozen men and women rose from lawn chairs positioned at the grassy green intersection and applauded as a news crew shot video. Two men held aloft signs proclaiming, Custis: The People’s Choice and Custis For Family Values. The signs were red-and-blue type over a white background with a full-color shot of Custis’s face in profile. I figured the senator’s PR team had scoped the route and passed out signs much in the manner of Jesus distributing loaves and fishes.