Speaking in Tongues

going to hurt anybody. Collier, put it away. Be better for everybody.”
    Jimmy kept the gun pointed steadily at Tate’s head.
    Tate put his own pistol back into his pocket with a shaking hand.
    “Come on upstairs.”
    “Should I come too, Mr. Sharpe?”
    “No, I don’t think we’ll needya, Jimmy. Will we, Collier?”
    “I don’t think so,” Tate said. “No.”
    “Come on up.”
    Tate, breathless after the adrenaline rush, climbed the stairs. He followed Jack Sharpe into a sunlit den. He glanced back and saw that Jimmy was still holding the shiny pistol pointed vaguely in Tate’s direction.
    Sharpe—wearing navy-blue polyester slacks and ared golfing shirt—was now all business. No longer jokey.
    “What the fuck’s this all about, Collier?”
    “Where’s my daughter?”
    “Your daughter? How should I know?”
    “Who’s driving the white van?”
    “I assume you’re saying that somebody’s been following you.”
    “Yeah, somebody’s been following me.”
    When Tate had seen the Liberty Park sign he’d remembered that his clients in that case had complained to him last week that private eyes had been following them. Tate’d told them not to worry—it was standard practice in big cases (though he added that they shouldn’t do anything they wouldn’t want committed to videotape). “Same as somebody’s been following my clients. And probably my wife—”
    “Thought you were divorced,” Sharpe noted.
    “How’d you know that?”
    “Seem to remember something.”
    “So if you were following us—”
    “Me?” Sharpe tried for innocence. It didn’t take.
    “—you’ve been following my daughter too. Who just happened to disappear today.”
    Sharpe slowly lifted a putter from a bag of golf clubs sitting in the corner of his study, addressed one of the dozen balls lying on the floor and sent it across the room. It missed the cup.
    “I hire lawyers to fight my battles for me. As you well know, having decorated the walls of the courtroom with their hides recently. That’s all I hire.”
    Tate asked, “No security consultants?”
    “Ha, security consultants. That’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Well, no, Collier. There ain’t no private eyes and no see-curity consultants on my payroll. Now, what’s this about your daughter?”
    “She’s missing and I think you’re behind it.”
    Another putt. He missed the cup again.
    “Me? Why? Oh, I get it. To take you outta the running at the oral argument next Thursday down in Richmond, right?”
    “Makes sense to me.”
    “Well, it don’t make sense to me. I don’t need to do that to beat you. You know, I fired those half-assed shysters you reamed at the trial. I got the big boys involved now. Lambert, Stone and Burns. They’re gonna run right over you. Don’t flatter yourself. They’ll burn you up like Atlanta.”
    “Liberty Park, Sharpe. Tell me. How much’ll you lose if it doesn’t get built?”
    “The park? It don’t go through? I don’t lose a penny.” Then he smiled. “But the amount I won’t make is to the tune of eighteen million. Say, ain’t it unethical for you to be here without my lawyer being present?”
    Tate said, “Where is she? Tell me.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Come on, Jack. You think I don’t know about defendants harassing clients and lawyers so they’ll drop cases?”
    Sharpe ran his hand through his white hair. He sat down beneath a picture of himself on the eighteenth tee of the Bull Run Country Club, a place that proudly had not a single member who wasn’t whiteand Protestant. Male too—though that went without saying.
    “Collier, I don’t kidnap people.”
    “But how about some of those little roosters that work for you? I wouldn’t put it past a couple or three of them. That project manager of yours. Wilkins? He was in Lorton for eighteen months.”
    “For passing bad paper, Collier, not kidnapping girls.”
    “Who knows who they might’ve hired? Some psycho who does kidnap girls. And maybe likes it.”
    “Nobody hired nobody,” Sharpe said, though Tate could see in his eyes that he was considering the possibility that one of his thugs had snatched Megan. But five seconds on the defensive was too much for Jack Sharpe. “Running outta patience here, Collier. And whatta I know—I’m just a country boy—but if I’m not mistaken isn’t that slander or libel or some such you’re spouting?”
    “So file suit, Jack. But tell me where she