“I ain’t talking ’bout that. I’m talking about damage. Doc Cage had a heart attack while he was waiting for that trial, didn’t he?”

I nod slowly.

“Hey, I love your daddy, man. He took care of me when I was a kid. Took care of my mama till she died. That’s why I’m telling you this. It’s what the hippies used to call karma. What goes around comes around. That’s what brought you back here. You the chicken coming home to roost. Right on Marston’s ass.”

“So give me what I need to nail him.”

Ike shakes his head. “Gimme, gimme, gimme. I told you, it don’t play that way. I can point you in the right direction. But that’s it.”

“I don’t like playing games.”

Ransom snickers. “That’s what they do here, college boy. You ain’t been gone so long you forgot that yet. Right now they playing their favorite game of all.”

“What’s that?”

“The quiet game.”

“The quiet game?” Memories of Sarah flood into my brain, of her trying to trick Annie into being silent long enough for us to eat dinner in peace, by seeing who could go the longest without talking. “Who’s playing the quiet game, Ike?”

“Everybody, man. White and black both. Everybody keeping quiet, making like things is sweet and easy, trying to fish that new plant in here. Nobody wants nobody digging into Del’s killing. Nobody ’cept you. You got a reason.”

“What about you? What’s your reason?”

His grin vanishes as though it never existed. Hatred comes off him like steam. He extends his forefinger and taps his powerful chest with it. “That’s between me and me. Del’s killers is playing the quiet game too. They been playing it thirty years. Not even sweatin’. You got to make people nervous to win the quiet game. And I got a feeling you pretty good at that.”

Something is coiling within my chest, something I have not felt for years. It’s the hunter’s tension, wrapped like the armature of an electric motor, tight and copper-cored, charged with current and aching for resolution, for the frantic discharge of retribution.

“A lot of people think poking into this case would be damned dangerous,” I tell him.

Ike the Spike closes the distance between us and squeezes my right shoulder, his grip like the claw of a wild animal, like he could close his hand a little tighter and snap the bone.

“That’s where I come in. Boy, you lookin’ at dangerous. Ask anybody.”

* * *