“If you’re straight with me, then I can be straight with you. And if you’re not,” he leaned back in the booth, took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke like he was a steam engine, “I can kick your ass all the way back to the city.”

“Do you think I could get a beer?” I said.

Cherry waved his waitress over. “Couple of beers here, hon,” he said. She had the bottles on our table in under two minutes.

I told Cherry everything I could think of. Finding Martin Benson’s body, Trixie’s disappearance, my being left handcuffed in the basement. Flint’s investigation. How Trixie’s dragging me into this mess might cost me my career with the paper. That once I’d learned all I could in Canborough, I was off to Groverton, based on no more than a gas station receipt I’d taken from Trixie’s car.

“If you find her,” Cherry said, “you might learn something that could help me with my open file on the Kickstart murders.”

“Maybe,” I said.

He took a swig from the long-neck bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you going to dick around with me anymore?”

“No,” I said.

Our cheeseburgers arrived. They were the size of curling stones, without the handles.

“That’s good. Because you seem like a nice guy, and I’ve set up this thing with Bruce, and it would be a shame to cancel.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

Cherry worked his hands around the cheeseburger. “If this doesn’t make your heart stop, you’ll really enjoy it.”

My heart was still beating when we left, but I was pretty sure I’d come down with a touch of lung cancer. My clothes reeked of cigarette smoke. When we came out into the night air, I sucked in as much of it as I could, feeling as though I’d just emerged from a house fire.

“You need to hang out in more dives,” Cherry said. “I thought newspaper reporters were a bunch of hard-drinking, heavy-smoking types.”

“That’s kind of changed over the years,” I said. “Now we all own minivans and have to leave work early to get our kids to soccer.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Cherry said.

“What?” I said.

“You’ll see.”

Cherry turned into an industrial area on the outskirts of Canborough. He slowed as we passed a low-rise concrete-block building with bars on the windows. Surveillance cameras and spotlights were mounted in several spots just under the eaves. Half a dozen motorcycles, big ones with sweeping handlebars, were parked out front.

“Clubhouse,” Cherry said. “This is where the Comets hang out, conduct their business. Some of them even sleep here, pretty much live here.”

“Wingstaff?”

“No. He’s got a house in town. Doesn’t look like a bunker, but it’s still got plenty of surveillance equipment around it.”