Bentley bent down and rolled up his khakis to his knees. “You got some work boots around here to fit me?”

“Can’t have a man laboring in loafers,” Caddy said. “Let me see what I can find.”

*   *   *

“I brought you a little present,” Lillie Virgil said. “An endangered shitbird from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.”

“What about your people in Oxford?” Quinn asked, picking up the cigar he’d neglected during Tashi Coleman’s visit. He tipped the ash and relit the end. Lillie never really seemed to give a damn whether he smoked or not, understanding a little caffeine and nicotine was needed on the job.

“Fuck ’em,” Lillie said. “His paperwork got lost. The original charges were filed in Tibbehah. And that’s where he’ll make his first appearance. They want this turd to answer to federal charges, you can FedEx his sorry ass up their way.”

“As long as it doesn’t get you in trouble.”

“Shit,” Lillie said. “After what he did to Boom? Just don’t fuck him up too bad or I’ll have to answer for it. But talk to him all you like. He softened up a little on the ride over, resigned to his fate.”

“How’d it go with his girlfriend?”

“Little Miss Twilight?” Lillie said, sitting at the edge of his desk. Everything as smooth and easy as it had been when she’d been his second-in-command. Lillie looked tall and cool in a black linen shirt with her sleeves rolled up and dark jeans, Sig Sauer and Marshal’s badge clipped to her Western belt. “Apparently, he wasn’t much of a lay. I found her working at a shithole on Summer Avenue. Her mother told her I was coming. She didn’t seem to have any issue with it. Sat outside the club as she smoked a joint and told me all about her time on the run with Kmart Butch Cassidy. He promised her champagne wishes and caviar dreams but only delivered Popeyes fried chicken and screw-top whiskey.”

“What’d he say about Boom?”

“Denied it,” she said. “Said it was all J. B. Hood.”

“God rest his soul.”

“Spoken like the man who shot him dead on Highway 45.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Guilt-ridden?”

“Terribly,” Quinn said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I wake up every morning crying to myself. You want some coffee before we do the meet and greet?”

“I sure missed your coffee, Quinn,” Lillie said. “Marshals’ office has one of those old Bunn coffeemakers, pumping out the same weak-ass shit since back in the day. I have to drive on down to South Main by the train station to get a decent cup.”

Quinn started for the door, turning back around with his hand on the brass knob. “Before we do, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Lillie crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “You still fixated on that fuckwad Vardaman?”

“Yep.”