“You all big and bad, Brock, but even a little motherfuckah could stab me in the back. No names.”

“All right. But I do need to know the name of the girl Kilian was after.”

“I have no idea. Up until right now I thought the whole thing was likely a figment in a shell-shocked vet’s mind.”

“Why’d he come to you?”

“How should I know? The man he thought he killed was black, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Yeah. It was late at night in the woods. Maybe he wasn’t. But if you askin’ where Kilian got my name, I got no answer.”

Brock studied me a little further. His stare alone, I believed, had broken many a man. But I was better than that. I was just scared shitless.

“I gotta different story to tell,” he said when I refused to crumble. “I had a girl worked for me was smarter than a store-bought pair’a tits. She could juggle three sets of books would make any accountant scratch his head. After the first year she was workin’ on all my businesses and with some of my partners’ money too. She got knee-deep in our shit, ripped us off, and ran. We tagged a nigger named Alonzo to get to her, but she must’a paid him off or somethin’. Now he’s on our list too.”

“Too?” I said. “You plan to kill her?”

“Not before she gives us our mothahfuckin’ money.”

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands, trying to look innocent. “She took your money and bought off your boy. But I don’t see where you could imagine that I have anything to do with it. Craig neither. From what he told me he didn’t even know the girl.”

Brock downed his shot and then held up two post-like fingers to indicate to the waitress that he now needed a double.

“Craig was Delphine’s boyfriend,” Brock said while nodding something to the waitress. Then he looked at me. “On her last day at work he picked her up and drove her away.”

The waitress came and set down a nearly full glass. Most other men might have gotten a little tipsy drinking like that. But for somebody like Brock whiskey was fuel.

“All right,” I admitted. “That looks bad for Craig and Delphine. But where it gets hazy is when I get the blame.”

“Craig hired you,” Brock said just before guzzling half his liquor.

“How would you even know that?” I asked.

“Craig told me with his own bloody mouth.” I didn’t need to hear any more on that subject. “And if you’re working for them, then you’re workin’ against me.”

“I can see how it might look like that on the surface. But I told you: He said he didn’t even know the girl. He didn’t give me a name or a picture or nuthin’.”