“I didn’t do that. I went in and he was sitting on the stairs. He looked in bad shape. I wanted to know what had happened, that’s all. Maybe you hadn’t taken the stuff. I didn’t know. So he was on the stairs, trying to get himself together it looked like. I figured you’d beaten him and took off, but before I could ask him anything, he came at me, charged at me. He would have killed me, that’s how he looked. So I shot him. I was never supposed to use the gun. They told me that all I had to do was put it in your face and you’d hand over the bag. I screwed up, but they said they could make it work. That’s what happened.”

“Who do you work for?”

He shrugged.

“What happened to the gun?”

“It wasn’t mine. I gave it back to the guy who gave it to me.”

I described Froehmer to him. It wasn’t Froehmer. I described Mobley to him. It wasn’t Mobley. Or at least that’s what he had me believe. I didn’t know how much to believe of anything.

“You don’t know who you work for any more than I do, not really,” he said. “I was brought into this because of you, and that’s why I’m bringing this to you. You be careful. I don’t want you to wind up like your friend.”

“Do you know who killed my friend?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything, but I know this is bigger than we know. There are at least three people after that trophy,” he said. “It could be any of them.”

“I need to know.”

“I can’t help you with that. I just did a job. I didn’t know it was you. I got caught up in something that was supposed to be easy, and I screwed it all up. That’s why I’m here. They’ve got me in a box. You know that now. You know what it’s like. You know how that works. I’m telling you something to help. You need to hand it over. You don’t know how bad things can get.”

“I’ve got an idea of it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just get rid of it, for once and for all. Then nobody will have it. There will be nothing to come for.”

“You know it won’t work like that. Give it to whoever hired you, if he can protect you. Otherwise they’re coming.”

“They’ll come either way, I suppose.”

“I suppose.”

“How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t so hard,” he said.

“Then what took you so long?” I was joking, but he answered anyway.