“Oh, no, my brother. You don’t learn that till you get to the bottom.” He held up a thick forefinger. “And we ain’t near ’bout there yet.”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go somewhere and sit down, just the two of us? We’ll drop the bullshit and come to some rational accommodation. How about it? These kinds of situations have been around for centuries, and people found a way to live with them.”

“You mean bastard sons and rightful heirs sitting down and working shit out?”

Money again. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

His eyes hardened into dark gemstones. “Man, you better wake the fuck up. It’s way too late for that.”

“Is it ever too late to do the right thing?”

“Ask my mama that.”

This silenced me. I thought about driving away, but something held me in the parking lot, under that smoldering gaze. The anger in Lincoln Turner was to the hatred of men like Snake Knox as a blowtorch to liquid nitrogen. If Lincoln wanted Annie dead, he would cut her throat on the steps of a church and feel justified in the eyes of God. Snake might do the same, but he would do it in cold blood.

“What did you say to my father when you visited him in jail?” I asked.

“My father, you said? You mean our father, don’t you? As in, ‘Our Father, who art in prison, cursed be thy name . . .’?”

The malicious edge in his voice sent a shiver along my arms.

“What would you say?” he asked. “What would you say to a man who’d left you and your mother to die on the side of the road?”

“Lincoln . . . he didn’t even know you existed until a few months ago.”

His eyes blazed. “Boy, you’re like a blind mole burrowing through rich soil. Don’t know what’s behind you, above you, or beneath you. You’re fat and happy, right up till the moment the patient farmer hammers a spike through your head.”

This image made my heart flutter. “Who’s the patient farmer? You?”

Lincoln laughed once more, big rolling waves of sound that rebounded between our two vehicles. “Daddy, bro. Who else? Big Daddy. You and me, we’re out here suffering, not knowing shit. And he’s over there in a federal country club being protected by the FBI. You ’splain that to me, huh?”

I said nothing. Lincoln had no interest in the agenda of John Kaiser or the FBI. He cared nothing about the Double Eagles or the Kennedy assassination.