I didn’t understand how a guy was so smart and still didn’t understand the physics of a pistol. I shoved him up hard against the wall with my left hand under his chin, lifting him onto his tiptoes. Then I screwed the nozzle of the gun into his nostril.

He gave me a hard stare like he didn’t think I had the nerve to pull the trigger.

I extended my thumb up and pulled back the hammer of the pistol, so he would hear the cocking sound and see the movement. That did it.

“Okay, okay, hang on one second.”

I didn’t move. I growled, “Talk.”

And he talked quickly.

“Pete and I stumbled onto a new recipe for meth. One of the chemical engineering students from Columbia I used to buy shit from made it. We interrupted his deal with some Canadians and got lucky.”

“How lucky did you get?”

Alton said, “Six hundred and fifty thousand.”

“How much is the recipe worth?”

“We’ve been offered a million bucks for it. The Canadian mob is all over this. The Canucks love prescription pills and meth. And this recipe has them drooling.”

“Why? What’s so special about it?”

“You can make it with ingredients that aren’t too hard to find. Not quite as potent, but it can be made on a big scale.”

“Who has it?” The whole time he’d been talking I had been releasing my grip slightly, at least to the point where his feet were flat on the ground. Now I stepped back with the pistol still pointed at his face.

Alton was out of breath and sweating as he said, “Pete and I stashed the money and the recipe with the help of another partner. We wanted to make it so not one of us could get to the cash without the other two. It’s in a bank up in Poughkeepsie and you need two keys to get into the box, and a code to get into the safety-deposit-box room without any questions.”

“What do you have?”

Alton stuck his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a flat metal key with a number 68 on it. He said, “Pete had the other key, but I suspect whoever shot him took it.”

I stared at the key.

Sensing my interest, Alton closed his fist around it and held it by his side.

I said, “You think I won’t take it?”

“You’ll have to kill me first. I earned this.”

I decided to let it go for the moment. I said, “So who has the code?”

“Forget that. What you need to do is find out who has Pete’s key. Whoever has the key probably killed Pete and has the answers to get your brother out of jail.”

“I need some direction. You were my best lead.”

“A cop picked up Pete on some cheap, narco charge. Pete told me—”