“Gotta say, Jude always had this side. Angry. And weird. But I was weird too when I was using. It’s too easy to judge, you know.” He nodded back to the Lions Club. “I’m not really into God so much but I think there is a Greater Power, you know, like they say in the program. Maybe you’re the answer to his prayers.”

—

The drive to Canton took forty-five minutes. He’d made a reservation at an RV camp named Bide a Wee (Scottish for “Stay a little”—one of the most common names for camper parks). He bought a hookup spot and parked the Winnebago there. Occasionally he used his Yamaha motorbike on jobs. But for this one, he chose to rent a sedan. For one thing, cycles are conspicuous and he needed to be as invisible here as spring air.

For another, someone driving two wheels is a lot more vulnerable than someone driving four.

After leaving the Avis lot, Shaw drove to a nearby diner. He pulled into the parking lot, walked inside a place decorated in the style of the ’50s—there was a cutout of Marilyn Monroe on the wall—and sat at the counter. He ordered coffee and a tuna salad sandwich.

Shaw once again read the profiles Mack had prepared of the local gangsters. One seemed more promising than the others. His name was Orin Trimbeaux and he was a mid-level drug and gun dealer who’d been investigated for selling weapons in Steuben County, though he’d been released.

Trimbeaux was a short, wiry man of mixed race, Black and Anglo. He had spent nearly a quarter of his thirty-eight years inside prisons or detention centers. Drug offenses, weapons, assault. He’d also done time for domestic abuse (two different girlfriends were the complaining witnesses, and the offenses happened within days of each other—which was probably a record of some sort).

The reports that social workers, defense psychiatrists, and parole officers submitted for Trimbeaux’s various appearances in the judicial system were consistent: he was of above-average intelligence but had been diagnosed as suffering from borderline personality disorder, was given to paranoia and bouts of temper and presented with extreme narcissistic tendencies.

Trimbeaux’s current address was a rental in a run-down neighborhood in Canton. Shaw parked across the street from the two-story, single-family house and waited for the dealer to appear. He knew someone was inside, because of the flicker of a TV screen, and he soon could detect that Trimbeaux had several visitors, two men and two women. Shaw kept up the stakeout for six hours straight, with only one break to use a restroom and buy food and drink.

At eight that night Trimbeaux emerged, disheveled and appearing tired or maybe drunk. Shaw followed him on foot to Washington Street, a four-lane commercial avenue lined with bars, fluorescent-lit restaurants offering functional food, nail salons, shops selling wigs and hair extensions, payday loan businesses, delis.