His nod was slow. “He’s no farmer. Just been rentin’ out that way, last year or so. If you’re his friend, I mean no offense. If you’re lookin’ for him for your own reasons…I just figured you might like the skinny.”

That seemed a funny thing for him to say. Then he said something not funny at all.

“You know, you’re the third…interestin’ feller who stopped here to ask directions out to Strutt’s today.”

I chuckled. “By ‘interesting’ you wouldn’t happen to mean ‘lowlife,’ by any chance?”

His white gas-station uniform was as crisp as his smile was rumpled; both he and his jumpsuit were protected by the canopy over the pumps.

“I recognize you from the papers, Hammer. You’re no lowlife. What I would call the boys who stopped for directions…each in his own vehicle over a kinda staggered bit of time today…is hardcases.”

“Like me?”

His grinned was stained. “I don’t think any other hardcase is quite like you, Hammer. Should I check the paper out tomorrow, you think?”

“Maybe. But sometimes interesting stories fall through the cracks.”

“Like interestin’ fellers do?”

“Like interesting fellers do…sometimes. If I handed you a five-spot, would you be offended?”

“Damn straight I would. I’m the owner. I catch any of my help takin’ a tip, I kick ’em in the ass.”

“I bet you do.” I gave him a little salute, which he returned with that rumpled smile, and pulled into the rain, which was getting more insistent.

The third farmhouse after I took the blacktop into the country had the STRUTT mailbox. Neighbors seemed spaced pretty far apart out here. I slowed a little for a look. A silo and a barn indicated somebody was farming this land, though apparently not the rental resident of the big, rambling, ramshackle house, white faded to gray. A long gravel drive bordered on one side by trees and on the other by indifferently tended grass widened into an apron, where four cars were parked close to a covered front porch.

I drove perhaps half a mile before tucking the Ford into a cornfield’s access, rows of dried brown stalk stumps dripping and leaves shuddering under what was now a near downpour.

For a while, I just sat there. The rain drummed on the roof of the car, steadily, like a drum and bugle corps minus the horns. Thunder would rumble, then roar, and lightning would light up the cornfield, where those leaves seemed to shiver in fear.

What was going on back there?

What could be going on?

My hunch was that Harry Strutt was part of that bank robbery crew, and this was a planning session. But the hardcases who stopped one at a time at that filling station had needed to find out how to get to Strutt’s. Curiouser and curiouser, somebody said.