Couple years back, he’d been in a bar fight in which a guy had died. I had found the other two guys involved and proved one of them had delivered the killing blows. Thal had nixed the heavy drinking after I cleared him. Win–win.

We stayed around to watch the little Satan’s spawn gal get rescued a couple of times. Thal fought the six bad guys holding her; shot two of them, went martial arts on the asses of the other four. One knocked Thal behind a crate, but it was Burt who came out from behind it to untie the distressed damsel.

She was grateful, till the director called, “Cut.”

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

Years ago, when Velda went missing and I was on the hunt, I had headed out to find an upstate farmhouse where she might be held. The only difference this time was the daylight I was driving in, though the grayness overhead all but cancelled that out, the rain coming right at me at a discouraging slant, my wipers working overtime.

At the office, Velda had gathered some info for me from a policewoman contact. A mugshot of Harold D. Strutt, 38, was faxed over to us and gave us what’s what on our man. Strutt had done two terms at Sing Sing, one for armed robbery, another for breaking and entering; several arrests on various charges had not been brought to trial. He was twice divorced with three kids and had been flagged as a deadbeat dad.

I turned off Palisades Drive and caught the Throughway, my Ford heap plowing through rain for over an hour before I swung off again, taking 17K into Newburgh. I went on to Marlboro before stopping outside the city limits at a filling station to ask the way to Harry Strutt’s farmhouse.

The attendant was young and had no idea, but he yelled at an older guy who might know, who came over to give me directions.

He had a deeply grooved face and white hair with a burr haircut, and I just knew he was ex-military, the right age for my war. I wondered what hell he’d gone through only to wind up pumping gas and checking oil. Or maybe he owned the place, and the American dream had worked out for him.

He was looking at me funny, a warrior’s nasty grin in that wrinkled puss. “What do you want with Strutt?”

“It’s your business?”

“No. No. It’s just…he’s awful popular today, for somebody that nobody around here cares for much.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s a drinker and a bragger and he gets into fights just for the hell of it.”

“You don’t say.”