“See, me being a federal agent lends a little more weight to what I’m about to tell you. You know what I mean?”
“I suppose I do.”
“I hate that word.”
“What word?”
“Suppose. You either do or you don’t. It’s just an unnecessary word people throw in to sound pretentious. Are you trying to sound pretentious, Mr. Wilcombe?”
Wilcombe shifted in his seat and pushed up his glasses. “Agent Holly, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you again, what this is about.”
“That’s good,” Holly said, and smiled his shark smile.
Wilcombe was confused. “What’s good?”
“That you’re afraid. I would be, too, if I were in your position.”
“And what position is that?”
Holly took his badge out of the breast pocket of his blazer and set it on Wilcombe’s desk. He opened the leather bifold and turned the ID to face the old man.
“Can you read that?”
Wilcombe leaned in and examined the credentials but didn’t touch them.
“That says ATF,” Holly said, “which stands for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. So it’s understandable for you to be pissing into your Depends having me sitting in your little office here. I mean, seeing that you make your money selling illegal firearms.” Holly tapped the big letter F on his ID.
Wilcombe did his best to look indignant. “I have no idea what you’re—”
“Stop, old man. Don’t give me the I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about speech. I know everything—ev-ery-thing.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Holly shook his head and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. That sentence, the very sentence I told you not to say, is the last lie you get to tell me. From here on out, you and me are going to talk openly, and more important, honestly, or I’m going to get up, thank you for your time, go outside, and give my people the go-ahead to rush the factory here in Jacksonville and have them take a good look at the east building. Then I’ll call my teams waiting in Tampa at 1121 Maple Springs to have them raid that gun plant, too. The other one in Pensacola isn’t active right now, but I bet the storage facilities are packed to the gills with assault rifles in boxes waiting to be shipped out to Atlanta.”
Wilcombe’s indignation vanished, but Holly kept going. “The seven whorehouses you have scattered throughout this fine state and the shipments of gun parts and raw methylamine you receive at your warehouse at the port of Tampa will have to wait, but I bet my boys with Customs and the FBI are gonna have a fucking field day with them.”
Wilcombe’s face was pale now, and a light sheen of sweat broke out on the paper-thin skin of his forehead. Holly smiled.
“Clearly this is a misunderstanding,” Wilcombe said.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Holly said, waving one finger in the air. “What did I just say about lying to me?”
Wilcombe collected himself and thought before he spoke another word. “Why are you here?”
“I thought that we’d established that already. You’re an asshole gun dealer. I bust asshole gun dealers. We’re a perfect fit.”
“Allow me to rephrase. If you know all of this about me—about my business—and the ATF is set up outside all of these places you’ve mentioned, then again I ask, why are you here? Why isn’t this office being flooded with more of your people to take me into custody? What are you waiting for?”
“You are a smart one, ain’t you? But I guess you’d have to be, to keep this racket up as long as you have without ever bringing the heat down on you. But that’s all over now.”
“I assume there’s a deal to be made?”
“Look at you. You really are a thinker, aren’t you?”
“What do you want, Agent Holly?”
Holly’s smile vanished. He pulled his wallet from his pants and opened it. He took out a tattered photograph of a young woman hiding one side of her face and sitting in the grass with a dark-haired little boy. He briefly stared at the picture, then laid it down on the desk next to his badge and ID.
Wilcombe looked at the photograph. “What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a picture.”
Wilcombe winced. “I can see that. Am I supposed to know who’s in the picture?”
“You’re supposed to, but I’m sure you don’t. People like you take a shit on so many lives, it’s probably easier to forget them than to keep track.”
Wilcombe’s face hardened as if he’d just been slapped. He wasn’t used to being the one without leverage. He didn’t look at the picture again.
“You asked me what I want,” Holly said. “That’s what I want.” He tapped a finger on the photograph. “But I’ll never get to have it back because of you and those fucking animals you work with in the Peach State.”