That’s How I Roll: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

always called by its full name was Homeland Security.
    Way too many of them to accomplish anything. All they did was get in each other’s way. They kept telling me how they were all on the same side, but they kept going at each other like they were blood enemies … even right in front of me.
    I started seeing them all the same way I do preachers: real good at telling other people how to act—but they had some special, private deal with God, so they were exempt from those same rules.
    You want to buy yourself a real chance at salvation, well, you make sure you throw something in the collection plate. And chip in to buy the preacher his new car every year, too.
    I guess it sounds like I hate men of the cloth. I don’t, not really—I generally liked those I met personally. Except for the fat old swine who had hinted that what had happened to me and Tory-boy was God’s punishment for some sin.
    If any of the people I’d done work for had wanted that one killed, I would have given it to them cut-rate.
    The more I thought about that man, the more hate came into me, like lungs gasping for air when you’d been underwater too long. Whatever sin had been committed didn’t belong to me or Tory-boy. Anyone who couldn’t see that was too dirty in his own mind to be allowed to call himself a man of God.
    he way it ended with all those different Feds was when one of them told me that their task force was being disbanded because of “cooperation issues.” That was pretty funny.
    What happened was what always happens: the strongest bear drove the rest of them off.
    You’d think that would be Homeland Security, but it was the FBI team who came out on top. Didn’t even break a sweat doing it, either. It wasn’t a blood-drawing fight; hardly a tussle, in fact. You could see who had the real muscle just by listening to them say “good morning” to each other.
    ATF was the toughest to push out. They only left after telling theFBI team that they “expected a complete report.” But the way they said it, it was the same way some guys mumble threats under their breath as they’re walking away after backing out of a fight.
    tep Three was revealed to me as soon as they trimmed down to one agency. The FBI couldn’t stop saying “RICO.” They soft-spoke it, like it was sacred.
    They told me I would be serving the people. Protecting thousands, all over the country. Doing the right thing.
    One of the older agents even told me that giving them what they wanted was my only path to forgiveness.
    I knew I was past any forgiveness. And if forgiveness was going to come from them, I didn’t even want it. Had this same government that now was trying to make me talk done the right thing when it had the chance, none of this would have happened at all.
    For that, I could never forgive
them
.
    ne of them was a black guy. He said if I told them everything I’d be a kind of savior. The people they wanted me to inform on were killing my community. Sucking the life out of it, parasites feeding on decent people. You could tell he hadn’t done any more research about this place than looking it up on a map.
    At first, nobody paid any real attention to me. They all had some routine they believed in, so that’s what each one went with. None of them even waited to see if I was buying it, just kept talking. Talking and nodding to themselves … like senile old men do in nursing homes.
    Finally, they stopped. All of them. Like they’d heard the same alarm clock go off.
    The next morning, they all sat around in this horseshoe, forminga wall around me to the front and sides. My back was already against the wall, so I was surrounded.
    They just sat there, waiting.
    I moved my head around the horseshoe, so each and every one of them would know I was including him in my deliberate silence.
    It was graveyard-quiet. I couldn’t hear them breathe. I guess they misunderstood my message—if I was ready to open the floodgates, they wouldn’t want to miss a