“You know what’s lower than a maggot?” I said. “That would be a man who informs on his own partners. Everyone on a job takes some kind of risk. But if you’re caught, a man’s meant to play his own hand.”
“How do you think we found you, Mr. Till?” one of the agents said.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said, surprised it took them so long to try that sorry trick.
“You want it spelled out, we can do that,” another one spoke up. “Would that do it? If we gave you the name of the man who gave us yours, would you be ready to—?”
I stomped on the hand he’d been using to deal the marked cards from the bottom of the deck. I’d known enough men who’d been through this same game before to know exactly what to say to them.
“If somebody gave you my name, why don’t you just ask him what you want to know?”
They went quiet again. I let their silence settle before I said: “Sure. So you’re either bluffing, or the guy you got was some little messenger boy. Like a FedEx driver who knows where he dropped off a package, but couldn’t tell you what was in it, never mind who had it sent.”
They just kept looking at me.
“Anybody you got to talk to you, he doesn’t know anything,” I said. “A guy like that, he wouldn’t do any heavy lifting. All he’s good for is sticking up gas stations, running errands, getting drunk, and beating his wife. Probably has a long enough sheet so another felony would put him under the jail.”
Watching their eyes was like reading a newspaper.
“Sure … that’s probably it. You got this guy—the one you say gave you my name—but you got him for something else, didn’t you? Nothing to do with this other thing you keep asking me about.
“Maybe he had warrants out. Maybe he was already on parole. But whatever it was—if you’re even telling me the truth—that would have been for his own crimes, not anyone else’s. So he can’t give you a thing. You could drill as deep as you wanted, you’d never hit a vein.”
They still kept quiet. I guess it was some kind of technique: let me talk enough, maybe I’d drop something they could use.
That wasn’t going to happen. But all that silence had already told me I was right, so there was no harm in telling them some more of what they already knew.
“A man like that, he’d tell you everything,” I went on. “Spill his guts … if he had any to spill. Enough for a search warrant? Sure. But you already found enough stuff in my place to connect me to all kinds of things, didn’t you? Your problem is, there’s too much space between what you found and what you want. Especially what you want the most—names.
“So you used your computers. Probably, by now, you can tell each other you know who hired me. At least you think so. Only problem is, you can tell each other all you want, but you can’t ever tell a jury.”
An older guy with a short haircut—not like it was “styled” or anything, more like he didn’t want to be bothered with going for haircuts too often, so he told them to take off as much as they could—he had one of those ripsaw voices. He didn’t have to speak loud, because when he opened his mouth everybody else shut up.
“You have to admire a man who won’t inform on his friends,” he said. A jab, just to watch my response.
About ten seconds passed. When I still didn’t say anything, he threw the sucker punch he’d been storing up all along.
“But the people we want aren’t your friends,” he said. “They aren’t your ‘partners,’ like you called them. You’re a hired hand. A day laborer. They don’t think any more of you than someone they’d hire to cut their lawns. Or scrub out their toilets.”
I looked in his eyes—twin flecks of the ground we have around here, dark brown and rock-hard.
“I know that,” I told him.
That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. His face didn’t move a muscle, but I could feel the words hit him just the same.
But this guy was too much of a professional to be taken out with one punch.
“Then just tell me something, Esau,” he said. “Tell me why a man with your intelligence wouldn’t take this incredible opportunity. The opportunity we’re offering you, right now, here, today. Can you tell me that much? Just for my own understanding.”
My hands rested on the wheels of my chair. Rested lightly. “That’s not how I roll,” I told him.
And I smiled real friendly, so he’d know there was no hard feelings.
ater that night, alone in my cell, I thought about what I’d said. There’s probably a lot of different ways to look at those parting words of mine.
Maybe the Feds had meetings about that; I don’t know. As far as they were concerned, I guess those were my last words, in all respects.
But just because I’d turned down their best offer didn’t mean they were going away. They couldn’t do that: there was a fire to feed, a legend to maintain.
Kill a Fed and you die. You all die.
But lurking shadows don’t scare me—I grew up under them.
So, when Step Four came out a shade of gray, I plucked it out right away.
very bomb-builder has his own style, but there are certain rules for alclass="underline" handle the ingredients with respectful delicacy, and never close it up until everything needed is inside.
That’s why I never stopped talking with the Feds. They had one of the ingredients I needed before I could wrap the package.
Ever since I came to understand that money can buy more than just things—like cars or houses or big TVs—I’d gone after it. I committed all kinds of wrong acts for all kinds of wrong people, all purely for the money. The money to buy safety for me and Tory-boy.
I was all done with that kind of work, but I still needed money.
It wasn’t just money I needed, it had to be clean money. I didn’t care what they called it, or whose name was on whatever paper they signed to get it, but the money would have to come from a source the Feds couldn’t ever trace back to those wrong people I had done all that wrong work for.
I knew the Feds would be watching any money coming in to me. And even if I managed my way around that, I’d have to get the money back out.
There’s ways of informing without actually saying a word. There’s ways you can draw a bright-red arrow pointing wherever you want it to. The people I’d worked for, they’d expect me to be aware of this.
So I had to make sure they knew I was keeping faith with them. Because now the river was flowing in the opposite direction. A certain kind of work still had to be done. But instead of getting paid, I was fixing to make some payments.
Maybe I should have said to myself, “Well, I was always loyal to them, why shouldn’t they do this one last thing for me?”
But you don’t ask favors of your employers. That’s not the relationship. Nothing I had done for them had been an act of friendship. You might be friendly with a doctor, but you don’t walk into his office without expecting a bill when you leave.
I never even considered the possibility. Even if they wouldn’t think of it as blackmail—and I wouldn’t blame them if they did—that’s just not how it’s done. I’d been paid fair and square for what I did, every time I did it. That’s where the old saying comes from: “If you don’t like the job, just put the bucket down.” My kind of work means that you put it down gently, not drop it and splash water all over everyone else.
I’d had a goodly amount put away, in different places. But once they had locked me up, I’d been forced to spend a big chunk of that money.
Most of that went toward keeping things in place while I waited them all out. That wasn’t so hard. I was used to doing business over the phone, and I could use the jailhouse pay phone anytime I wanted. After all, I hadn’t been actually convicted of anything yet, so I was what they call a “pre-trial detainee,” and that gives you certain rights.