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stands back up, closing the car door. He walks toward me until only a few feet separate us. He raises a badge. Joshua Corwin, it says. FBI.
You win that one, Abe.
“Your name?” Agent Corwin asks.
“Benji. Benjamin Green.”
“How’d your dad die, Benji?”
My throat is dry. “Car accident?”
He hears the inflection in my voice. “Are you asking me or telling me?” “Car accident.”
“Oh? When?”
“Five years ago. Five years this May.” A little over a month away. “That right?”
I’m uncomfortable, unable to see his eyes. “Why?”
He ignores this. “Sheriff Griggs still around, huh?”
“Sure.” It comes out bitter.
“Not friends, I take it?”
“Long story.”
“It usually is. Was your dad a good man, Benji?”
A short bark of laughter is out before I can stop it.
An eyebrow arches above the sunglasses. “Something funny?”
“If you knew him,” I say, my voice growing hard, “you wouldn’t have asked that
question. He was a good man.”
“Oh? He would have done the right thing, you think?”
“Always.”
He nods.
“Look, did you need something? I’ve got a customer waiting on me, so….” “Old-timer? Yeah, he hasn’t stopped staring at me since I got here.” Agent
Corwin waves at Abe, who is still standing at the window. Abe doesn’t wave back. “Nice guy,” Corwin says.
I wait.
Finally, “What’s the word on the wind, Benji?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He cocks his head at me. “This is a small town, right? Doesn’t everyone know everyone else’s business here? Rumors usually spread like wildfire.”
“Maybe,” I say slowly. “But I’ve never been one to care about that sort of thing.”
He reaches back behind him, and I think for a moment he’s going to go for a gun, or handcuffs, and I think that maybe I’ve done something wrong, that I shouldn’t have looked into things like I did. I want to tell him I’ve left it alone for a while now, even though it is still there in the back of my head, white noise that won’t ever disappear.
He hands me a business card instead. The FBI seal. His name. His phone number is listed, and for a moment, I zero in on the last two digits: seventy-seven. “You call me you ever start to care about that sort of thing,” he says. He’s mocking me, but he doesn’t know that I know.
