“Tell me, then. Get it out.”

“I’m tired, Walt.”

“Screw that. Get the monkey off your back. This is me, son. We squatted in the mud and the blood and shit together. You can’t get no closer than that.”

Tom began to speak in spite of himself. “It was like I told you on the phone. When I first called you. It was like the ambulance. Exactly like it.”

“Goddamn it,” Walt whispered. “I knew it.”

Tom jumped when his cell phone vibrated in his pants.

“What is it?” Walt asked.

“My cell,” Tom said, digging the shaking phone out of his pocket with difficulty. The LCD read QUENTIN AVERY.

“I told you to keep the damned thing off! They can track you with that.”

“I know. I turned it back on at the Sonic to check for messages, and I guess I forgot to turn it off.”

“Jesus.” Walt thumped the side of his head. “Radio silence!”

“Quentin?” Tom said, holding the phone tight to his ear. “Are you there?”

“I’m here. Penn called me, and he knows I’m your lawyer now.”

Tom swallowed. His throat was dry. “What else does he know?”

“Nothing.”

“Does he know I’m gone?”

“I don’t know you’re gone.”

“Okay … okay. Good.”

“But I need to ask you about something.”

“What?”

“The Double Eagle group.” Quentin Avery said the name the way a German Jew might say “Schutzstaffel.” Hatred and contempt dripped from his tongue, but there was a trace of fear, too, even after all these years. “They attacked Henry Sexton tonight. He’s barely hanging on.”

“Oh, God.” Tom felt nausea in the pit of his stomach. The cheeseburger was trying to come up. “What happened?”

Quentin had hardly begun his story when Walt tapped Tom on the shoulder. “They’re moving, Tom. Snake and Sonny are headed back toward Natchez. I’m going to drive to the bridge and pick them up when they cross back into Louisiana.”

Tom nodded and motioned for Walt to start the van. “Sorry, Quentin. Are you still there?”

“Yeah. And I’m concerned that you seem to have forgotten your age. You and your buddy both.”

“We’re all going to have to forget that for the duration, Quentin. You included. Finish your story about Sexton.”

While Quentin told his tale of the assault on Henry, Tom saw an image of a worried little boy who’d stood by while Tom stitched up his mother’s arm after an accident with some kind of farming implement. Tom had met Henry several times as an adult, of course, while treating his parents, but for some reason Tom tended to remember members of the generation behind his own as children.