I guess the guy didn’t believe what Liam told him.”

“Can you take the crackers out of your mouth?”

“The guy died. I think he had a heart attack.” Bobby Lee saw Preacher’s eyes narrow. “It’s on him, Jack. He wouldn’t cooperate.”

Preacher picked up a sugar cube and plunked it into his coffee, his eyes never leaving Bobby Lee’s.

“I thought you were diabetic,” Bobby Lee said.

“You thought wrong. Finish what you were saying.”

Bobby Lee’s gaze seemed to turn inward, as though he were searching his memory, wondering if he was mistaken or if Preacher was lying to him. Then his gaze came into focus again. “The guy said something about a Siesta motel in a town by the border. It was hard to understand what he was saying.”

“He didn’t speak the same language as you and Liam?” Preacher said.

“You know, what Liam was doing.”

“Doing what?”

“Jack, you sent us to get information. We pushed the guy’s truck through a guardrail in broad daylight. We had to park the car up the road and climb down into a canyon. We had a few minutes to work the situation and cover our ass and extract ourselves.”

“Extract yourself?”

“Is there an echo in here? The problem is not me and Liam.”

There was a beat. “Then who’s the problem?” Preacher said.

“You’re worried about this girl identifying you, but you let the Jewish guy slide. In the meantime, none of us have got paid. Not me, not Liam, not Hugo, and not you. Does that make sense to you?”

“Tell me, why would the Jewish man want all those women killed? He’s a procurer. Procurers don’t kill their women,” Preacher said.

The first song ended on the jukebox. Bobby Lee waited for the next song to begin before he spoke again. “I didn’t know what you and Hugo were gonna do behind the church. I think you made a mistake, Jack. But don’t blame me for it. I just want to get paid. I think I’m gonna go back to Florida and take some more interior design courses at Miami-Dade. With one more semester, I can get an associate of arts degree.”

Preacher’s eyes roved over Bobby Lee’s face and seemed to reach inside his head and search his thoughts.

“Why you staring at me like that?” Bobby Lee asked.

“No reason.”

“I’m gonna be frank here. Hugo and I think you’re slipping, like maybe you should get some counseling or something.”

“What did you do with the restaurant owner?”

“Before or after?” Bobby Lee saw the heat rising in Preacher’s face. “Liam broke his neck, and we strapped him back in his truck. Nobody saw us. It’ll go down as an accident.”

“Did you take anything from the truck?”

“No,” Bobby Lee said, shaking his head, his eyes flat.

“You don’t think a coroner will know the man’s neck was broken after he was dead, that his body was moved?”

Bobby Lee put a matchstick in his mouth, then removed it and looked back at the jukebox. He folded his hands on top of the table and studied his fingers. His facial skin had the texture of boiled pig hide.

“You wanted to tell me something else?” Preacher asked.

“Yeah, when we gonna get paid?” Bobby Lee replied.

“What did you take from that man’s vehicle?”

“What?”

Preacher removed his hand from his coffee cup and lifted one finger. “I’ve been your friend, Bobby Lee, but I cain’t abide a liar. Give careful thought to your next statement.”

The side of Bobby Lee’s face twitched as though a doodlebug were crawling across it.

SATURDAY MORNING, HACKBERRY was planting rosebushes in the shade of his house, setting the root balls in deep holes he had dug out of coffee grounds and compost and black dirt, when he saw Pam Tibbs’s car turn off the state road and come through the wood arch that spanned his driveway. She had been on duty all night and was still in uniform, and he assumed she was on her way to her house, where she lived with three cats, a twenty-year-old quarter horse, and a screened-in aviary full of injured birds.

When she got out of her car, she had a bag of charcoal in one hand and a plastic bag packed with picnic food hanging from the other. “It’s late for planting roses, isn’t it?” she said.

“At my age, everything is late,” Hackberry said.

“I’ve got some sausage links and potato salad and beans and slaw and buns, if you’d like to have an early lunch,” she replied.

He stood up and took off his straw hat and blotted his forehead on his sleeve.