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

drop.
    So I went around the horseshoe with my eyes again. Even slower this time. I had every molecule of their attention.
    “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, gettingdrunk, 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. “Theyaren’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