“So what did he do?” he asked. When Nesmith gave him a look, he nodded at the drum. “Buchanan. Did he kill the wrong guy, fuck the wrong girl? Other way around? Was it just money?”
“Just money?” Nesmith said. “If that’s your attitude, maybe the terms of our agreement were too generous to start with.”
Ezra cleared his throat. “They were not,” he said as he stood up. “Clay, get to the point.”
The lid came off. Nesmith looked into the body soup without flinching.
“Where’s his head?”
Clay plunged his arm in and groped around until he felt hair. The liquid was warm and thick, slimy despite the thin, bleachy smell, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat as he pushed a bit of arm out of his way. He wasn’t going to lie—not to himself—it was absolutely disgusting. He didn’t let that show on his face as he pulled Buchanan’s head out.
Stuck in a thumb, his brain dredged the old rhyme back up and scattered it through his brain in dissonant, rattling tones,and pulled out asquelchyplum.
Liquid dripped off Clay’s arm and splattered on the floor as he turned the head around to face Nesmith. What was left of the face.
There was a pause as everyone stared at it.
“All right,” Nesmith said. He gestured for the head to go, and Clay dropped it back into the soup. “You’ve found Buchanan. We had hoped for him alive.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s getting better,” Clay said. He shook the gunk off his arm and sat back down to look at Nesmith. “See, thing is, I know ol’ Bit Part Buchanan there fucked up. Why else would you be here.”
Ezra nodded at Harry to leave. Then he kicked a chair out from the table for Nesmith.
“It’s a good point,” he said. “Even if Buchanan was meant to check in after he made the pickup, you’d still have needed a good day to get here. Maybe you’d be rolling into town around now.”
“Instead, you beat him here,” Clay said. “You checked into the Lodge yesterday. My theory?”
Nesmith sat down. His men stood behind him. “Go on,” he said.
“Buchanan robbed you—and by you, I mean Fisher—absolutely fucking blind,” Clay said. “Obviously, that’s not something you want to get out. People are greedy. The last thing you want to do is give them ideas.”
Nesmith reached over the table and took Clay’s beer. He took a swig and leaned back in the chair, bottle balanced on his knee.
“So, not something I’d want to confirm to two second-rate thugs from the back end of nowhere,” he said. “No offense.”
Ezra snorted. “Look, we saw this shit play out before,” he said. “With more money and bigger players. The reason you wanted Buchanan alive is that he still had your money. Either he’d transferred it out of your reach or he’d cashed up before he left Lexington. It’s probably the latter. Folding money is hard to track. Unless you’re the government.”
Clay nodded. “True that.”
Nesmith drank his beer.
“Even if that were true—”
Limpy made a noise in protest and stepped forward. “Fisher already told us to—”
Nesmith glanced around at him. “Then squeal on me to Fisher,” he said wearily. “But don’t interrupt me again.”
“Or what?” Limpy asked. “I answer to Fisher. Not you. I—”
Nesmith moved slightly and braced his expensively shod heel against Limpy’s foot. The expression on his face didn’t even change as he applied pressure. Limpy screamed, went a sickly color, and doubled over to dry retch.
“You don’t have a leg to stand on,” Nesmith said. “Get him out of here.”
The blond man grabbed him and dragged him outside, face grim and exasperated. Nesmith watched him go and then turned back to Clay and Ezra. He adjusted his jacket fastidiously.
“Sorry for that,” he said. “As I was saying… if that’s true, which I haven’t confirmed or denied, why did you call me down here to tell me things I already know?”
“If it were true,” Clay parroted.
