“I’ll take you at your word on that.”
His eyes really are so colorless I feel as if I can see right through them and might be able to see his soul if I thought he had one.
“All respect toyounow, son,” he says, smiling again, “but what about our meeting has given you the impression that I give afuckabout whether I care if you take me at my word or not?”
Now there’s some snap to his voice, just like that.
My response is to stand, mostly because I am suddenly tired of acting as if I give a fuck about anything he’s been saying to me. And wondering what I thought I might accomplish here today.
“I guess all I can say is that I’ll take as much or as little help as you can give me with those girls, Briar,” I say, calling him by his first name now. No more “yes, sir” or “no, sir.” Letting him know that, as deferential as I might have sounded, we’re in the same weight class. In all ways.
“Leamon was right about something else he said to me, though,” I continue. “My father would have done everything he could to help Leamon find his daughter. And I plan on doing the same, with or without your help.”
He stares at me, almost as if seeing me for the first time. Seeing me for myself, and not some extension of my dead father.
“Heard you also had some trouble at the high school,” Briar says. “Outside Silas Tucker Field. With some boys you said might have been dealing drugs.”
“Not might have,” I say. “Weredealing drugs.” I stare back at him before adding, “You know anything about that?”
“The beatdown you gave them, or the drugs?”
“Either way.”
I know I’m pushing him now. Poking at him. But I don’t care.
“Are you accusing me of something else, son?”
“Just asking questions,” I say. “Same as you.”
“Now you’re the DEA?” he asks.
“Just somebody who’s glad he busted the heads of some guys dealing drugs between my father’s high school and the field named after him.”
He gets up, walks around the desk, taking his time doing that, and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Can I make one more observation, Silas?” he says, stepping on my own name a little. “What happens in the real world isn’t like that make-believe world of college football you’re used to. Or even the world of pro football that got taken away from you in the cruel way that it was.”
He moves around so he’s in front of me, and we’re back to being eye to eye.
“I’m telling you that with respect, too,” he says.
He takes his hand off my shoulder, walks across the room, opens the door, and stands there with his hand on the knob.
“You can find your way out,” he says.
And I do, walking back down the spiral staircase and thinking of another line from Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the one about evil just being good perverted.
Tell me about it,I think.
THIRTY-ONE
HE PULLS BACK the drapes and looks down as Silas Tucker gets into the truck and drives away. Then Briar sits back down at his desk and quietly says, “Get in here.”
Roof and Lynyrd come through the side door, one that had been slightly ajar while Silas had been in conversation with their father, easier for them to hear from the next room.
Now they’re standing across from him.
“What do you think?” Briar asks.
