Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [60]
“If you interfere in a homicide investigation, you’re going to find yourself in handcuffs, Mr. Dowling.”
“My father said something about you, Sheriff, that maybe you should hear. He said you were one of those rare politicians to whom nobody had to pay money in order to corrupt. All they needed to do was appeal to your Don Quixote complex. He said the only payment you required was a chance to play the role of the knight-errant so you could self-destruct and absolve yourself of your petty sins. I think my father read you like a book.”
“Tell you what, I changed my mind about something I told my chief deputy this morning. I said I couldn’t care less if you tried to slander my name. But on second thought, some might think the elements in your lies refer to my dead wife, Rie, and the nature of my relationship with her. You did make those remarks, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t have to make them. Everyone who knew you already has.”
“I don’t like to humiliate a man in front of his employees, but for you, I’m going to make an exception. I’m probably in the top of the eighth inning or the bottom of the ninth, which means I don’t have a lot to lose. You ever play much baseball, Mr. Dowling? If you crowd the plate with the wrong pitcher, you can bet the next pitch will be a forkball at the head, the kind that hits you like a dull-bladed guillotine.” Hackberry smiled pleasantly and winked at him. “What do you think about that?”
“Considering the source? Not very damn much,” Dowling said.
Hackberry went back inside his office, sat down at his desk, and did not look outside the window until he heard the SUV drive down the street. But the anger that had bloomed in his chest would not go away. A half hour later, the phone on his desk rang. He looked at the caller ID and answered. “¿Qué tal?”
“¿Qué tal?” Ethan Riser repeated.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I know what it means.”
“Say what’s on your mind.”
“This is a personal call and off the record.”
“I’m the sheriff of this county. I’m sitting at my office desk, on the job, in my official capacity. Nothing that occurs here is off the record.”
“You sound a little short.”
“What do you want, Ethan?”
“I’m taking early retirement. I wanted to tell you that. Plus a couple of other things.”
“Like what?”
“You’re in the way.”
“Say again?”
“This guy Noie Barnum is the Holy Grail. We want him, Krill and his people want him, Al Qaeda wants him, Temple Dowling wants him, and now Josef Sholokoff wants him.”
“Why would a Russian porn dealer risk his immigration status by going into espionage?”
“Josef Sholokoff has been spreading drug and porn addiction around the country since he arrived in Brighton Beach. Why should doing business with third-world bedbugs bother him?”
“You said I was in the way.”
“Guys like you are not team players. You’re a hardhead, you don’t chug pud, and you cause major amounts of trouble. Government agencies might say otherwise, but they don’t care for guys like you.”
“What difference should that make to me?”
“They won’t have your back, bud.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“I’m at a driving range. I wish I’d done more of this a long time ago.”
“When do you retire?”
“Three months, more or less. Yeah, about three months.”
“You’re retiring but you’re not sure when?”
“I’m terminal.”
Hackberry leaned forward on his desk. Before he could speak, Riser cut him off. “I used to smoke three packs a day. Five years ago I quit and thought I’d gotten a free pass. I went in for a blister on my nose last week, and the doc said it was already in my liver and pancreas and had reached the brain.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan.”
“There’s something I never told you about my history with the Bureau. You remember right after 9/11 when a planeload of bin Laden’s relatives was allowed to leave the country without being detained, except for the fifteen minutes we were allowed to interview them on the tarmac? I was one of the agents who went on board the plane.