“Did she describe him?” Nate asked.
Joe fished his small spiral notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Tall, pale, mid-fifties. Dressed well. Kind of handsome in a scary way, she said. He had ‘creepy’ eyes and a mouth like a girl model. That’s what she said, ‘a mouth like a girl model.’”
Nate shook his head in recognition.
“So you know about him?” Joe asked.
“Yes, and now it’s starting to make some sense. He also went to the school to ask about Alisha. What I don’t know is why he came himself, and why now.”
“Does this guy have a name?” Joe asked.
“John Nemecek,” Nate said.
Joe repeated the name phonetically, “John Nemma-check.”
“Yes. He was my master falconer. I was his apprentice. We used to work together. He saved my life more than once, and I saved his.”
Joe asked, “So he’s a friend?”
“He was once. But that was years ago.”
“Not anymore, then?”
Nate paused, then said, “Joe, he’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”
Joe simply stared. Then he asked, “Why would he pay the Kellys and the Mad Archer to take you down?”
Nate said, “Because that’s one of their tactics: recruit local tribesmen.”
Joe sat up straight and asked, “What?”
Nate said, “Even with the name, you’re not going to find out anything about him. Like me, he’s been off the grid for years. But unlike me, he’s been hiding in plain sight.”
Joe said, “Local tribesmen?”
Nate stirred the fire so the flames erupted and the dry pine lengths popped sparks. He said, “COIN. Counterinsurgency tactics. How much do you want to know? I’ve tried to tell you before, but you didn’t want to hear it.”
Joe cocked one eye. “And I’m not sure I want to hear it now. Just tell me: how much trouble are you in?”
Nate sat back on the cool ground and met Joe’s eyes. He said, “He’ll probably kill me. I’m just being realistic. He’s that good.”
Joe’s face fell.
“In a way, I deserve it,” Nate said. “In fact, I’m resigned to the fact. Considering what I carry around with me, it may even come as a relief. I’d welcome some kind of conclusion. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” Joe asked, almost in a whisper.
“John Nemecek deserves it even more than I do.”
Nate thought Joe looked like he was in physical pain, the way he kept writhing around while seated on the log. Nate could guess at the source: Joe wanted to know almost as badly as he didn’t want to know. And Nate understood. Joe was a sworn officer of the law. He took his oath seriously. He’d managed to stay just over to the right side of the line all these years because he wasn’t keeping Nate’s secrets — secrets that might lead Joe to turn his friend in or arrest him outright. Not to mention what Joe would think of him if he knew.
Nate said, “I’ll let you off the hook for now so you can relax.”
Joe looked up with the quizzical Labrador-type expression he sometimes had, even if he didn’t know it.
“I’ll save it for when you have to know,” Nate said. “When there’s no choice. It might be sooner than you think, but for now we can move on.”
Joe seemed to be okay with that. He asked, “Do you have a game plan for this Nemecek guy?”
Nate shrugged, “I’m still working it out. But what I do know is that something has happened to cause him to come out here for me in person. In the past, as you know, he sent surrogates. I was able to, um, make them go away.”
As he said it, he could see Joe withdrawing a little, so Nate brought it back to vagaries.
“Anyway, I need to do some investigating of my own,” Nate said. “I’ll find out what’s happened that made him feel like he had to come out here and take care of things himself. He’s secretive and cautious, and he’s always been an expert when it comes to getting things done and not leaving any fingerprints of his own on the operations. So for him to leave his lair, well, something is pressing him hard. If I find out what it was, I might have an angle.”
Joe said, “Did he send someone out here to take care of Large Merle? Get him out of the way? No one’s seen the guy in a month.”
Nate was surprised Joe was aware of the disappearance of Large Merle, but he didn’t give it away. Joe once again impressed him with his innate ability to dig deep and look at the world through his own eyes.
“Yes,” Nate said. “He sent a young woman. He knew Merle well enough to know his soft spot, and that’s how he got to him. Merle should have known better. Not many young and attractive women show interest in a giant.”
Joe asked, “Is Merle the last one of your friends from the old days?”
Nate shook his head. “Not entirely. I’ve still got some allies, but there aren’t many left. A few of them died of natural causes. A couple went straight and won’t even acknowledge our old unit. A couple more are in prison, where they tried to put me. And there is a small group of them … in another state. They’re off the grid, too.”
“Can they help?” Joe asked. Nate wasn’t sure Joe knew about the conclave in Idaho, but he’d made references in the past and his friend was probably aware. For one thing, Joe knew Diane Shober, for whom they’d both searched in the Sierra Madre, was in Idaho. But Joe didn’t let on anything, and Nate didn’t press.
“I’m going to find that out soon,” Nate said. “I’m going to go away for a while. Nemecek won’t hang around here if he thinks I’m gone.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t want you any more involved, as I said. The farther you stay away from me, the better.”
Joe sighed heavily. “I can keep an eye out, at least,” he said. “If this Nemecek is still in the area, I might get a lead on him. It’s a small town, Nate. Not much goes on somebody doesn’t talk about it.”
Nate started to object, then thought better of it. Joe did have a wealth of contacts and was the kind of man people liked to talk to. Joe was empathetic. People told him things they shouldn’t, and Nate was guilty of that as well.
“That might be okay,” Nate said. “As long as you don’t try to do anything. If you did and something happened and Marybeth and those girls lost a husband and a father … well, that can’t happen. I mean it, Joe.”
Joe scoffed.
“You think I’m kidding, don’t you?” Nate said. “And I don’t mean that as an insult. You’ve got a way of getting into the middle of things and you usually come out on top. But it’s a percentage game, Joe. The odds wouldn’t be with you if you got too close to him. He’s not like anybody you’ve ever run across.”
Nate paused, and said, “I’ve always admired you, Joe, you know that.”
His friend looked away, but even in the firelight Nate could see he was flushing and uncomfortable.
Nate said, “You’ve got a beautiful wife, great daughters, and a house with a picket fence. I know it sounds trite, but there are assholes out there who think my life is hard, but it isn’t. Anybody can keep to themselves and be selfish. What you do every day is hard, Joe. Staying true and loyal, man, that’s not the easy path. I admire what you’ve got. …”
Joe leaned back on the log and rolled his eyes, said, “Enough!” but Nate kept going.
Nate said, “I want to defend it, even if I can’t ever get there myself. That’s what this has always been about: admiration. So I can’t let you get hurt trying to solve my problem. And this guy … he’s something else.”