Niceville

War.”
    “Yeah. That’s what I thought. It looked old enough. He moved … funny … as if he had a stiff back. He smelled of diesel fumes.”
    Beau wrote down BUS STATION ?
    “This Glynis woman? Her name mean anything to you?”
    Lemon shook his head.
    “No. I’ve never heard of her. But the guy in the grave, his last name was Ruelle, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes. Ethan Ruelle.”
    “Do you know a Glynis Ruelle, Nick?”
    “I know a woman signed her name GLYNIS R . on the back of the mirror that Rainey was looking at in Uncle Moochie’s window.”
    “Wasn’t that a real old mirror?”
    “Yes. From Ireland, Moochie figured. Real old.”
    Lemon shook his head.
    “I don’t get any of this.”
    “I don’t think we’re supposed to. I think someone is having a lovely time playing around with our heads. There are a lot of Teagues in this part of the state,” said Nick, flicking a look at Beau, who was scribbling fast. “We’ll run the names and see if anything comes up.”
    Lemon had a question.
    “Did the name Abel Teague ever come up back when you were looking for Rainey?”
    “No. Look, Lemon, this morning you were saying that Sylvia Teague was looking into her ancestors a few days before she died. Maybe this Abel Teague is on her computer somewhere.”
    Nick sipped his coffee, checked his cell again.
    Kate. Where are you?
    Nick looked back at Lemon.
    “So what do you think?”
    “I told you this morning, Nick. I thought this stuff was from …”
    “Outside. Yeah. I remember.”
    Lemon sat back, looked at them, said, “Whatever is going on here, I want in.”
    “This is a
police
investigation,” Beau said.
    “I’m a CI.”
    “For the
drug
squad,” said Beau.
    Nick held up a hand.
    “I can’t let you all the way in,” he said. “But I think we can use you.”
    “How?” asked Beau, looking at Nick. “Can you handle a computer?”
    “I did quartermaster inventory and supply for the Corps. But how can I get access?”
    “I’ll ask Tony Branko to let you come over to us for this case only. I’ll give him some reason. But this will get you off the hook with the DEA.”
    Nick’s cell phone rang.
    It was Kate.
    “Kate? Where have you been?”
    She was crying.
    “Nick. Come home. Please.”
    Nick sat up straight.
    “Honey. What is it?”
    “It’s Dad.”

Byron Deitz Really Dislikes the Chinese
    Deitz was sitting in the parking lot of the Helpy Selfy Market on Bauxite Row in Tin Town, across from the needle exchange, watching a skinny Goth chick with spiky blue hair undress in the window of her flat over top of the needle exchange.
    In the normal course of events Deitz’s sexual fantasies did not involve skinny Goth chicks with spiky blue hair. He ran more to the Large-Breasted Nordic Twins with Zero Gag Reflexes.
    But seeing as how she was showing every sign of getting all the way down to naked and he had nothing else to do right now but wait for Zachary Dak to arrive so they could be cordially dishonest with each other, this was as good a way to pass the time as any other.
    A swarm of addicts and gangbangers and dead-enders was circling the Hummer, some of them clearly trying to get up the nerve to hijack it, or at least to spray-paint a gang tag on it, or just to ask for a handout, but the fact that Deitz was sitting there with the windows wide open and a very large Colt Python sitting on the dashboard was creating a certain delicacy of feeling in this regard.
    The Goth chick getting naked above the needle exchange, who Deitz did not know was Brandy Gule or that if he had gotten anywhere near her with a workable hard-on she would have taken it off with a pair of nail scissors, was talking on the cell phone—to Lemon Featherlight, as it happened—and seemed to have halted her strip-down at a studded black leather push-up bra. Deitz was dealing with his disappointment by rearranging his courting tackle. It seemed that he was living in this fucking truck these days.
    He was still doing that when the long black turtle-limo pulled up alongside the Hummer and Zachary Dak rolled down his window.
    The arrival of the second luxury vehicle in this sorry-ass part of Tin Town was creating a major sensation—so much money so close—but thus far none of the locals felt like making a sortie.
    “Mr. Deitz,” said Dak, showing his tiny baby teeth. “I gather we have made progress?”
    “We have, sir,” said Deitz. “I have established contact. I have an address to wire the