Mad River

there for two nights. During the daytime, we went around to see if anybody had a job, and at night we’d go over to this pool hall. Bar and pool hall. Because they had free peanuts that we could eat if we all bought a beer. I ate about a pound of those fuckers.”
    “So you were at the pool hall. Would this be Roseanne’s Billiards in Bigham?”
    “Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Roseanne’s pool parlor.”
    “And was Jim hanging with anyone in particular?” Virgil asked.
    “Not the first night, but sometime on the second day we was there, he met up with this guy, Murph. He thought Murph might be able to get us a job because his old man was some kind of big deal in town. Well, that didn’t work out, but the second night, they were shooting pool for a long time.”
    “This wasn’t the night when Ag Murphy got shot. This was the night before that?”
    “Careful,” Burden said.
    “Everybody knows when Ag Murphy got shot,” Virgil said. “I’m just asking about the date, not about the shooting.”
    “Not that it makes any difference,” Meadows drawled. “We already got him on tape as admitting he was at the house.”
    “That tape may be challenged, as would be your last comment,” Burden snapped.
    Virgil made a time-out signal with his hands and said, “No lawyer stuff right now, okay? I’ll avoid the actual shooting . . . unless Tom wants to talk about it.”
    “He doesn’t,” Burden said.
    “Okay,” Virgil said. Back to McCall: “So starting the second night in town, he was hanging out with Murph. Would you recognize Murph?”
    McCall nodded. “Sure. I shot about six games of nine-ball with him.”
    “Did you win?”
    “No. He’s a pretty good nine-ball player. He was some kind of athlete at the high school.”
    Good detail,
Virgil thought. “Did Jimmy beat him at nine-ball?”
    “Oh, shit no. Jimmy is terrible at pool. Any kind of pool.”
    “So . . . you say that the next night Jimmy had a thousand dollars. But he couldn’t have won that from Murph, shooting pool?”
    “No fuckin’ way, man,” McCall said.
    “So when would Jimmy have gotten the money?” Virgil asked.
    “He didn’t have no money that night,” McCall said. “Didn’t have any the next day, until he borrowed ten bucks off some guy so we could get some breakfast. We went down to the IGA and bought a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter and one of jelly, and we ate that, and then Jimmy and Becky went off somewheres, and I met up with them that afternoon, and they still didn’t have any money. Then Jimmy left Becky with me, and when he came back, late that night, we were in the car, he had this gun and he said we were going to do some robbing—”
    “Stop,” Burden told him.
    Virgil asked, “He didn’t have the gun before?”
    “Nope. That was the first time I ever seen it.”
    Virgil leaned back in his chair and said to Meadows, “I’ve got nothing more to ask at the moment. Mickey won’t let me get closer to the robbery, but I already know what happened there, anyway.”
    “Okay,” Meadows said. “So let’s bring this—”
    “Wait,” Virgil said. And to Tom: “You think he got the money from Murphy?”
    Tom said, “Can’t think of no place else it could have come from. That money popped up like a gopher out of a gopher hole.”
    “And you told me they were brand-new twenties. Is that right?”
    “Yep. Brand-new and shiny. You could smell the money ink on them, when Jimmy flipped through them.”
    Virgil spread his hands and said, “I’m done.”

16
    VIRGIL CALLED UP SALLY on her cell phone and said, “Shoot, I was driving into town on 68 and you know what happened?”
    “You got a flat tire?”
    They met at the Perkins, and when Virgil slid into the booth, Sally said, “My reputation is going to be shredded. Changing the same guy’s tire two nights in a row.”
    “Promise me you won’t put it on Facebook,” Virgil said.
    “Facebook, the curse of the auto-tire repair business,” she said. Then, “You didn’t get them. I was watching on TV all day.”
    “No, we didn’t. I think . . . tomorrow. We could get them tomorrow. We likely will. But I’m afraid there are going to be more dead people. Unless they went someplace, parked, and killed themselves.”
    “You think that’s possible?”
    “Five percent,” Virgil said.
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL AND SALLY were just coming up for air, at the motel, when Becky Welsh, who’d been clicking around channels,