— What leaks.
— Maybe they…
— I said what leaks. Can you come out straight with it just once?
— I never lied to you, McCandless.
— Enough damned times you just didn't tell me the truth.
— That's a different thing.
— A different thing? Like freezing my bank account, who's got the IRS in there freezing my bank account.
— There's a very fine line, you remember that? There's a very fine line between the truth and what really happens, you remember who told me that? He'd put down the book and stood there turning up papers in the glare of the lamp. — You remember that? We used to talk, didn't we.
— One damned time you finally got it right, every, ev, ev…
— That's a great cough. Better than the last time I heard it, you been practicing? Think it's trying to tell you something?
— Why don't you tell me something. Not the truth, not from you no, no I'll settle for what really happened, why they're after me all of a sudden for unreported income that year, you knew about it you handed it to me. Cruikshank was your COS in Matidi he knew about it, he had to, now suddenly nobody knows about it but the IRS.
— Then what are you worried about, what do you…
— Not worried I'm just damned fed up! You're still working for Cruikshank?
— I'm still working for Cruikshank. I just told you, I'd never…
— Never lie to me no, then just tell me what in the hell you…
— What are you worried about. There's no record you were ever employed is there? They'll deny any classified operation you know that, that's agency policy. Anybody knows that, read it in the papers.
— In the papers, read it in the papers like this ringer they've got showing up in court with a bag over his head?
— Like him.
— Who is he.
— Ask them. Ask Cruikshank.
— I'm asking you. I'm asking you Lester, break in here when you think nobody's home with this nonsense about the redhead, am I getting into the redhead as though we're still sitting there in the Muthaiga Club before they set you up with that thin lipped Somali, before Cruikshank and his…
— That's a different thing. That's a different thing, Mc-Candless. We never got that much from you anyhow… He stood turning up slabs of colour, pinks and blues, unlabeled diagrams, — nothing we weren't already getting someplace else till you went to work for Klinger… and he held up a map detail to shake the dust from it, spread it flat on the file. — Is this his site?
— I don't know what it is.
— Don't tell me what you don't know. Just tell me what you do know. Klinger was trying to round up investment when he pulled you out of that broken down Tabora Middle School wasn't he? or had they already fired you. He sent you out with your little hammer and magnifier to see if that site he'd cornered was worth further exploration and you came back and told him what you'd found. When he showed up with his exploration permits he had what he said was your mapping, he had the remote sensing and these infrared scannings, high resolution photographs down to eighty square metres all over the whole seven thousand acres lining up claims with that mission boy down in the Chamber of Mines. You both knew there was a claim running into the mission's land, they'd already developed two shafts running right up to the edge of it. They made Klinger an offer he thought was too low so he was running around to Lendro, Pythian Mining, South Africa Metal Combine, all of them with these reports on the ore body he'd found out there on the mission land trying to raise the ante. What about it.
— What about it.
— These reports. What did you know about his reports.
— I knew you and Cruikshank were seeing every damned one of them. I knew you were paying somebody off to get copies of everything he came up with.
— How good was it.
— You saw it all. Ask Klinger.
— Ask Klinger.
— Well ask him! I didn't work up his proposals he did, I never saw them.
— What did you find.
— I told you. Ask Klinger.
— What's the last time you saw him.
— I never saw him again and look Lester, put the top back on that box and put it back where you got it. Whatever you're after it's not in there.
— Is this Irene?
— That's Irene. Put it back.
— Pretty. You never told me she was that young… the snapshot dropped back in the box and he stood there fitting the top on. — They found Klinger in one of those alleys back of the Intercontinental with two holes in his head.
— Is that it? You think I know who killed Klinger? Is that what all this is?
— Nobody cares who killed Klinger… He reached the box him, — could have been anybody. He was getting his hands on that slut that worked the New Stanley, we figured it was that Afrikaner she said was her husband. They were both gone the next day. It's like Dachau in here, you know that? He struck out to shatter the tranquil column of blue smoke rising between them, — will you put it out? You're not even smoking it, look at it. It's just lying there smoking. You're making me smoke it too, you know that?
— Why don't you just stop breathing then, go out and get some fresh air, let yourself out like you let yourself in.
— When's the redhead due back.
— I don't know.
He'd settled back on the metal file, watching the bottle come up to lose a level ounce into the dirty glass, reaching suddenly for the smoking cigarette to stamp it out on the yellowed marble. — Go ahead and kill yourself with these things, you don't have to kill us both do you? The boot heels had taken up bump, bumping against the side of the file. — What do you know about the redhead's husband.
— He's behind two months' rent, that's what I know about him.
— You ran a credit check on him didn't you? when they rented your house here?
— I didn't run anything. They gave the agent a bad check for a month's rent they made good a week later and that was it.
— You don't look out for yourself very well do you. You never did… He leaned down to crumple together a handful of loose pages from the folder on the floor. — The IRS down on you, you're probably short of cash, he came on dropping one page and going on to the next, the next, — you always were… and without looking up — I'll give you two thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.
— Still the big spenders.
— Cash. It's here isn't it? in this mess here someplace?
— Maybe you're looking at it.
— I'm not looking at it! I'm looking at a lot of, this how you make your living now? writing for the schoolbooks?
— How I made one.
— It's better than your rotten fiction, you should have stayed with it.
— Stayed with it? What do you think that trial in Smackover was all about.
— No I'm serious, McCandless. I'm serious, don't start on your Smackover. Two thousand cash. Look at your shoes, you…
— Think I made it up? like the name on that book there? You think ignorance isn't dead serious? Red dirt, rolling hills, a rail line, trickle of a stream and a town grows up there, great trees meeting overhead down the main street and some civilized person names the place Chemin-couvert. A generation or two of ignorance settles in and you've got Smackover, a hundred years of it and you've got a trial like that one, defending the Bible against the powers of darkness they're doing more to degrade it taking every damned word in it literally than any militant atheist could ever hope to. Foolishness bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it out so they whale the daylights out of their kids with sticks. And they shall take up serpents so they get liquored up and see how many rattlesnakes they can get into a burlap bag, talk about homo habilis in East Africa two million years ago, homo sapiens homo anything they know what a homo is don't they? the men of Sodom telling Lot to bring out his two visiting angels for a little buggery? back in Deuteronomy breaking down the houses of the sodomites? an abomination in Leviticus? these vile affections in Saint Paul burning in their lust to one another? Cutting a little close to the bone here, Lester? Talking about having business with the greatest work ever produced by western man and that's what you…