Mike nodded. “Protective Housing Unit. Never saw him. What’d you and Bergman talk about yesterday?”

“Why do you care?”

Time for the big sell. “What kind of job do you think an ex-cop can get with a felony in his jacket? Nothing on the books, I can tell you that. So when I got out, I dove in dumpsters, sold scrap metal—all that shit not fit for a white man. Then I met a guy.”

“Who?”

Mike looked around. “Do they record this shit?”

Woods leaned closer to the glass. “Video only, no audio.”

“No names,” Mike said, all lies at this point, “but the guy worked for a big PI firm and needed some muscle. I spent two years taking pictures of cheating husbands, planting bugs on cars, and throwing the occasional scare into would-be snitches. Then we got a client, I’m talking big money, the kind of money that makes rules, not breaks them.”

He had Woods on the edge of his seat. Every con loved a conspiracy.

“You think you and I are the only ones Bergman fucked with? This rich guy has a real hard-on for her. Not only that, he’s got juice too. I don’t believe in God or anything, but all of a sudden I’m getting paid to dig up dirt on the woman who ruined my life. Might not be a miracle, but that’s what I call justice.”

Woods nodded along. At this point Mike could sell him a timeshare. “So why are you here?”

“She’s down in Bloomington trying to take on an old police chief named Hartman who’s still got some friends.” Mike raised his eyebrows. “She didn’t tell you about your part in her big exposé?”

Panic flashed through Woods’s prison-yard-heavy routine. “No. She sat down yesterday looking like a freak show—thick-ass makeup, weird dyke haircut, said, ‘You remember me?’ I didn’t recognize her, so she said her name. I told her to fuck herself.”

“What’d she do then?”

“Bitch ran out in tears.”

Not the reaction Mike expected. “Bullshit. You made Caitlin Bergman cry?”

Mary Lubbers-Gaffney had told him about Caitlin’s panic attacks, but he’d seen the woman laugh with a knife to her throat. That this washed-up convict had a hold over her made Mike want to slip a guard five hundred bucks for a minute without the bulletproof divider between them.

Woods smiled. “I tried to cheer her up, asked if she wanted to sign up for a conjugal, relive the old days.”

Mike’s fingers strangled his handset. “When you raped her.”

Woods shrugged. “So what are you gonna do to that bitch?”

“Oh, I’m gonna take care of her.”

“You won’t say what?”

“You seem solid, but I knew plenty of stand-up guys who ratted to cut their sentences in half.”

“Not me—ask around.”