“Thing is,” he says, “I ain’t that smart. That’s why they kicked my ass out. Instead of bein’ part of the action, they got me chasin’ down some poor lady.”

My body tenses with anticipation. This could be a huge breakthrough … could being the operative word.

“Who kicked you out? What action?”

“Few months ago, word started spreadin’,” he says. “Online, mostly. Message boards and the like, the ones you need a password to access. Somebody high up in the Brotherhood”—that would be the Aryan Brotherhood—“needed help. They were plannin’ something so big and so bad against that shithole of humanity known as Mardi Gras. It would scare away all the damn monkeys and mongrels invadin’ our city, once and for all. Make it ours again.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“Never could figure out all the details,” he says. “But at one point, they were lookin’ for folks who knew explosives. That’s how I got involved. I served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saw plenty of roadside bombs blow up my buddies.”

“You were in the Army?”

He takes a sullen drag. “For a bit.”

“What do you mean, a bit?”

He lets out a cloud of smoke. “Made it through Basic, was gettin’ ready for additional infantry trainin’, and then I got kicked out. All ’cause I got in a couple of fights, and they didn’t like my … whaddaya call it. Psych profile. But that’s okay, I got work, soon enough.”

“An overseas security company?”

He nods. “That’s right. They didn’t care if I got into fights with some mud folks in the service, or if my psych profile wasn’t a hundred percent. They just needed someone who knew how to shoot … and who could learn ’bout settin’ explosives. Which took a while. And then I thought I could figure out how to make ’em myself.”

He shows me the chemical burns on his hands that I noticed earlier.

“Guess I wasn’t a fast learner.”

“Who was in charge of the group?” I demand. “Who was calling the shots?”

“That’s the thing. It was like everybody was gettin’ their orders separate. We only knew our little piece of the puzzle. And the couple times we’d meet up—at different abandoned houses all over the city—the team looked like the goddamn United Nations! There were always a few ragheads there. Couple wet-backs, too. I hated it. But like they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“The bomb-making supplies you mentioned—where did they come from?” I ask. “Who was paying for all this?”

He shrugs. “Rumor is, some rich restaurant guy, sympathetic to the cause.”

Holy shit. David Needham might be a paranoid asshole, all right. But is he really a closeted white nationalist?

“Then what?”