“So let’s say I get in,” I said to Merker. “What do you want me to do?”

“You ask her where the money is. You tell her we got her kid. She doesn’t tell, we kill the kid. Do you need me to write it down?”

“No,” I said. “What if there is no money? What if whatever you say she took from you is all gone? What then?”

Merker considered that. “Then we got a problem.” He wandered over to the fridge, where a few family snapshots were held on with magnets. There was one there of me, in a tux, with Sarah, decked out in a black gown, taken at a newspaper awards dinner a few months ago. Neither of us had been up for anything, but a reporting team Sarah had overseen had been nominated for an investigative series on city hall contract rigging. Merker studied it.

“Who’s the broad?” he asked.

“My wife,” I said.

“Nice rack,” he said. I didn’t feel like acknowledging that, either.

I decided to change the subject. “What led you to me?”

Merker said, “I listen to the news. They had the story about Trixie getting caught up in Kelton, they mentioned your name, that you worked for the paper, that you tried to talk her into turning herself in, and I figured you’d be a good guy to talk to.” He paused and studied my face. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“Only briefly,” I said. “I was there when you were trying to get the cops to buy your supply of stun guns.”

“Fuck, yeah. That really pissed me off, you know? That was you, right, who did the story for the paper? That fucked up everything. Once that ran, the deal went queer. People start asking questions, cops start taking heat about buying my merchandise.”

“Because it’s hot,” I said.

Merker grinned at me. “Where you hear that?”

“One of your old friends back in Canborough. Michael Cherry. That was his guess.”

“Fucking Mikey. You were talking to him?”

“Yeah. I talked to a lot of people, trying to track down Trixie.”

“What’d Mikey tell you?”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“You ran the Kickstart. Some bad things went down. You lost some people, got out of town.”

“He tell you about that?”

“A little.”

“He tell you who did it? Who killed my boys?”

“No. He doesn’t know. I think he thinks it might have been you. That you cut a deal with the other gang in town, they paid you off, you wasted your own guys.”

“He thinks that?”

“It’s a theory.”

“It’s pretty fucking wrong,” Merker said. “It was that bitch, that friend of yours, did it.”

I said nothing.

“You don’t even look surprised,” he said. “She tell you? She tell you what she did?”