“Most teenagers can,” I said. “You’ve got a bunch of cousins who are living proof.”

“Yeah? Anyhow, Braz was a follower, not a leader, and even though he was my son, he couldn’t seem to read people the way you need to be able to read them if you’re in the life. So he started running with some wrong kids, broke into some pawnshops, and they left him holding the bag. Twice. He was a slow learner, okay? And I guess you know he served a few months for trying to sell a digital sound system a so-called friend of his gave him to pay off a debt. He forgot to tell Braz the stuff was stolen, and with his record, the judge didn’t believe him.”

She turned to face me and the sadness in her smile made my heart ache for her. “But he’s been clean for the last eighteen months, ever since he got his own laptop and started buying and selling online. He got along all right with everybody here this summer, our crew, the other agents. You ask any of them. ‘Course, he did like to stick his nose in everybody else’s business, like he was the boss, not Arnie. And other times he’d get on that computer when he was supposed to just be going to the donniker.”

“Donniker?” I asked.

“Toilet,” she translated.

I remembered her exasperation last night when she thought he’d deserted his post.

“Somebody probably had too much to drink and got pissed off about something. Braz could mouth off without thinking and sometimes he’d let the marks get under his skin. A couple of times—if Arnie hadn’t been there...? You’ll see. If it wasn’t that black kid that hit him the first time, it’ll be something as stupid as a drunk cake eater punching him out because the Dozer took all the rent money.”

I didn’t know whether to say “Oh, surely not” or “I hope so,” but it didn’t really matter. She was back to beating up on herself again.

“Oh God! If I’d only let him go to the auction last night instead of making him work!”

“What auction?”

“One of those self-storage places was having an auction down in Makely but we were shorthanded and I told him if he went, he could just keep on going ‘cause we were counting on him here.”

“Storage lockers like the one the Lincoln brothers had their tools in?”

“Those guys that put a knife through my ride? Yeah, I told you. People don’t pay the rent on them and they get put up for auction. A lot of time, it’s just junk. Old clothes. Ratty furniture. You’d be amazed at the garbage people’ll pay thirty-five dollars a month to hang on to. Sometimes, though, you can wind up with some interesting things. Braz took the bid on a locker last year stacked with books. None of them were all that old, but they were all first editions, okay? He bought them for like two-fifty, and by the time he sold the last lot on eBay, he made almost four thousand clear profit. The first year we started doing it, Arnie found an antique pocket watch with a solid gold chain. It was just crammed into a box full of buttons someone had cut off old shirts. That locker cost us seventy-five dollars, okay? He and Braz put a picture of that watch on eBay and the bidding went to just shy of eight thou.”