Still, it was a dangerous game to play. The VK naturally wanted the name of every contact at once; so far Snake had managed to dole out a few at a time. But the endgame was inevitable. Once the bikers had all those precious contacts, they wouldn’t need him anymore.

Snake did have some genuine support within the VK ranks. Some of the older members treated him like a rock-and-roll star. The JFK story had obviously made the rounds, and this earned a lot of respect among the guys who remembered the 1960s.

“All right, hon,” Junelle said, stepping back from the stool. “You ready?”

Snake nodded. “Let’s see the damage.”

When she yanked the poster board away, Snake didn’t recognize himself in the mirror. His long white rat’s nest was gone, replaced by perfectly trimmed black hair combed straight back from his face. And Junelle hadn’t stopped at his scalp. She’d dyed his eyebrows, too. Combined with the new dentures Snake had bought off an Indian dentist up in Shreveport, the total effect was stunning. A complete transformation.

Snake whistled long and loud. “I’ll be damned. I look like Ronald Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair.”

“Better, darlin’,” croaked Junelle, sending ash floating from the tip of her cigarette onto his lap. She snipped an errant hair above Snake’s left ear. “Did Reagan go to the Neshoba Fair?”

Snake turned around on the stool. “Did he go there? Baby doll, when Reagan first ran for president, he got up on a platform five miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, and gave a talk about states’ rights. Summer of 1980, and I was there. He put it right in their faces, boy. States’ rights, and the hole where they buried them three civil rights workers not a stone’s throw away. The country responded, too. They knew what he was talkin’ about. Nobody left like Reagan these days. No, sir. Or it don’t seem like, anyway.”

“Well,” Junelle said, her head tilted to one side as she assessed her handiwork. “I think you may be my masterpiece.”

Snake gazed into the mirror like a septuagenarian Narcissus. “I’ll be dogged,” he marveled. “If those Arabs are as good with passports as you are with hair dye, I might just buy me an antebellum home in the middle of Natchez and sit on my veranda all day sippin’ bourbon.”

“I’m not sure I’d try that.”

“I might, though,” Snake murmured. “I just might. After my book advance comes in, that is.”

He felt his newest burner phone buzz in his pocket. Getting to his feet, he took out the phone and clapped it to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Toons.”

Terry “Toons” Teufel was the SA, or sergeant at arms, of the VK motorcycle club. Snake didn’t trust the man—who seemed like a nut job—but under the present circumstances he had no choice but to rely on him for protection.