on it. Then I called the lawyer.
It took another few minutes for that girl to put me through. All that control stuff she had going, she was going to end up costing the lawyer more than money. But I figured he knew that.
Turned out he knew a lot. “Let us be clear: this is an attorney-client conversation, in which I am reporting facts gathered by a person I employed to the person who employed me. That would be you.”
“Sure. That’s right.”
“Abner Jessop,” the lawyer said. “Would a DOB of 1961 work?”
“I guess so.”
“Six-four, one seventy-five?”
“Perfect, so far.”
“Priors back to ’79. Convicted of armed robbery, served eight years at Raiford.”
“That’s in Florida?”
“It is,” he said, like I should just shut up and listen. “Married in ’89 to one Lily Lee Macomb. Age listed as twenty-eight for him, fourteen for her.”
“How can you get—?”
“Parental consent,” he cut me off, like it was my second strike. “He’s got three children, none of them by the … woman he married.”
“So he’d be paying child—”
“In arrears, all three. State took his driver’s license in ’02. Restored it in ’06, when he got all caught up.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Prominent scar, left forearm. Confederate-flag tattoo over left pectoral.”
“That’s him.”
“Good. Two assault raps: one in ’91, the other in ’96. The first was tossed; complainant withdrew. The other, he used a knife. Six years in on that one.”
“So he would have been out on—”
“On parole, yes,” the lawyer said, cutting me off in case I was dumb enough to say a date. I’m glad he did, because that’s what I was going to say. “In fact, he still is.”
All finished, so he waited for me to say something stupid. When I didn’t, he gave me an address. It would be the same one his parole officer had, so it was probably just a drop, but it was a ton more than I expected.
“Thank you” is all I said.
The lawyer hung up without asking for more money, so I knew we were done.
When I got back, the Thunderbird was still missing. In my place, the clock said 4:54 with a half-moon. I changed into sweats, got a couple of bottles of water out of the refrigerator, and went to the gym.
Like always, when I work out hard, I get to a place where my mind is burning same as my body. Usually happens when I keep going even after I’m empty.
But the only thing I came out of that workout with was this: Rena was smarter than me. I wasn’t going to be able to trick her into anything.
I might make her tell me something, but I don’t have what it takes to do that. I mean, I could smack somebody around, scare the hell out of them, but for-real torture, the kind of guys who can do that, you don’t want to be around them. I don’t even understand how they can be around themselves.
I remember talking to one of them once. He told me, the worst thing in the world is when you have to go all the way, because the other guy’s not giving it up. And then, after all that work, you find out later that he never knew in the first place.
Just listening to that guy made me feel like a fucking pervert.
Rena already said she knew where Albie’s books were. But she said “work books,” not “books.” And she didn’t say “stamp books,” either. Maybe she didn’t even know there was a book like Solly’s, never mind where it was.
But I was just making excuses. When I told that cop, Woods, that if I found the guy who had really raped that girl I’d get him to tell me everything, I wasn’t lying. But only if he didn’t hold out too long. I never said that last part, because I wanted the cop to believe I’d do anything to get him the information he wanted. The truth is, I was going to skip all the stuff in the middle. If a broken arm or shattered kneecap would make him talk, great. But I wasn’t going past that. I’d just jump right over to where I wanted to be in the first place—killing him.
I wished there was somebody I could talk to about that. Not about my feelings or anything, but how I could do it. Get that Rena to tell me whatever she knew, so I could go back and try to find the man Solly wanted dead.
I wondered why I’d never brought