“Roger, wilco. I’m going to wait a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Let the situation blow over.”

“Need cash? I’ll get you cash.”

“Cash is always welcome. A flak jacket might be better.”

“Valley’s rough.”

“It is.”

“Even in the best of times, the area isn’t always hospitable.” His tone was sober, devoid of the machismo and mockery he typically wore like armor. Flat and resigned, like his sister. “Horseheads is a shadow world.” He waited a beat. “Do you understand? The Valley itself is the reason I tucked tail and fled right out of school. I didn’t even accompany Redlick on the rare occasion he made a detour to the ol’ plantation. Anywhere else on the planet, I was in his hip pocket. Not the Valley. Fuck the Valley.”

“Why?”

“Scenic beauty. Rustic charm. All that happy horseshit is a façade. Tell me your skin didn’t crawl. It’s got—”

“An aura,” I said.

“An aura, exactly. Make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Everybody gets used to that feeling and stops noticing. In the city you acclimate to traffic noise, or drunks shouting when the bars close. I didn’t stop noticing. The woods scared me spitless. The churches. The patriarchal families. Wackos in the hills.”

“You’re good with patriarchs,” I said. “You didn’t even give a damn about your own nephew’s death until Redlick handed you your walking papers. Suddenly, family became important.”

“You and I both have a track record of not giving a shit,” he said. “There was a time I counted Gerry Redlick as family. That overrode my common sense.”

“A lucrative business arrangement is what overrode your scruples.”

“Same as you and the Outfit. We eventually realized the error of our ways, didn’t we?”

“We should probably speak for ourselves,” I said.

Adeyemi chuckled as if he was tightening the cuffs on a perp he really, really disliked.

“A wise man sees into the darkness and perceives the true shape of things. I’ve had time to go over every conversation, every eavesdropped comment. My cop brain is reengaged. Whatever this is in Horseheads, it’s bigger than my nephew. Visa fraud on some daunting scale. Money laundering. That valley is bad juju and it brings out the worst in people.”

“Your cop brain chiming in?”

“Cursed, haunted, whatever label you want to slap on. The natives were aware. Double for the miserable fucks who tried to build the collider. RG, Zircon, Sword Enterprises, the whole bunch.”

“This come from the senator?” I said. “The two of you had many a midnight confab about cabbages and kings and particle physics, did you not? Or did it come from Mandibole? He regards the unusual qualities of the Valley and her denizens as a net positive.”

My comment wasn’t as sarcastic as my tone indicated. The moment superstition overwhelms a skeptic is a rare and breathtaking event. Adeyemi’s words and my own reactions nudged me toward a realization. Some of us who live past a certain age push through cynicism and into a black dreamland that is the negative of a child’s wonder. Even old corrupt cops and semi-reformed hitmen.