“But we’ll settle for a name. Find out who supplied the AK to Skarda, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Why me?” I asked. “I don’t have any undercover experience. You have agents who are trained for this sort of thing, who actually like this sort of thing. Why would you—wait a minute. Wait a minute! Why are we even having this conversation? I’m not a cop.”
“You used to be,” Bullert said. “A good one.”
“Operative words being ‘used to be.’” The expression on their faces told me everything. “You’re working the case off the books, aren’t you? It’s a black bag job. You don’t want anyone in Justice to know about it. You’re afraid there’ll be a leak, that someone will go running off to Congress and the hearings will start up again and everyone will be embarrassed and more supervisors will get fired.”
“That won’t happen if we recover the guns,” Bullert said.
“If, brother. If.”
“McKenzie, it’s not just about our reputation,” Bullert said. “Every time a crime occurs along the Mexican border, people, especially politicians, they start screaming about building electrified fences, building moats, for God’s sake. Do you want them to start talking like that up here? With Canada? Do you want to see a fence along the Rainy River, the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway?”
“It would be one frickin’ long fence,” I said.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do.” I turned in my chair to face Harry. “What does this have to do with you? You’re not ATF.”
“I asked him for help,” Bullert said. “I asked Harry if he knew someone we could depend on, someone we could trust. He mentioned your name.”
I was still looking at Harry when I said, “I’m going to have to thank him for that one of these days.”
“I want to get the guns, too,” Harry said. “Before someone gets hurt. Do you know how many killings there have been along the Mexican border tied to ATF guns? This seems like as good a plan as any to get them back.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Harry shrugged.
“Will you do it, McKenzie?” Bullert asked. “Will you help us?”
It took about three seconds to decide. I leaned back in the chair again and spread my hands wide, palms up.
“Hell no,” I said.
*
’Course, that was then. Now I was sitting on a deck in the North Woods overlooking a lake I could barely see in the dark. I felt movement behind me and turned my head in time to see the cabin door open slowly and a figure step out. White T-shirt, white shorts—even in the dark I could tell they were worn by a woman.
“Good evening,” I said.
There was a startled intake of breath before the figure eased cautiously toward me.
“Mr. Dyson?” Josie asked. She kept her voice low, probably out of deference to her sleeping family, I figured, so I spoke quietly, too.
“Just call me Dyson,” I said. “I thought we settled that.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I couldn’t sleep—blame it on unfamiliar surroundings. How ’bout you?”
“I’m anxious about tomorrow.”
“If it doesn’t feel right, Josie, just walk away.”
“Is that your professional advice?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“You need to make it that easy.”
“You don’t understand. There are bills to be paid.”
“I figured it had to be something like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are only three reasons people steal—to feed their family, to take a vacation in Jamaica, or to pay for a drug habit. You guys don’t look like meth heads to me, and this certainly isn’t Montego Bay. That leaves Jean Valjean and his loaf of bread.”
She moved to the railing, stepping between the moon and me, and I became aware of the shape of her body beneath the shorts and T-shirt. It was a nice shape, a body to arouse MILF fantasies in the young men at the minimart and gas station. Being older, of course, I was immune.
“Dyson, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you become a criminal? I only ask because you seem so comfortable in the role.”
“Me?” I flashed on Harry and Bullert. “You could say I fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“Now I’m the wrong crowd.” Josie’s voice reminded me of a tenor saxophone. It was quiet and calm and totally without self-pity. “I’m the people my parents warned me about when I was growing up. I didn’t mean to become a criminal, you know.”