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“What?”

“That I didn’t trust Seeley,” he said, “yet I’ve told you all I know. Why do you suppose that might be?”

“I like to think I radiate goodness.”

“I’ll grant you efficiency, and I take you for someone who prefers not to lie.”

“Lies don’t serve anyone well in my profession,” I said. “They have a habit of coming back to bite.”

“With poison in those fangs, I’d venture. If there’s nothing else, I ought to be about my business. I have a layer of varnish to apply to a table and a similar gloss to add to a sermon.”

“If you do hear from Wyatt—”

“I’ll let you know, if only so you can inform the woman that he’s safe. Oh, and Mr. Parker?”

“Yes?”

“If you persist in your search, there’s a good chance it will bring you into contact with Mr. Seeley. I don’t know whether he can be avoided, but my feeling is that if he can, he ought to be, if you take my meaning. ‘Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.’ That’s from St. Peter, who ended up crucified for his troubles.”

“Upside down.”

“Apocryphal. But even if true, I doubt he found it an improvement.”

“Thank you for the warning.”

“If it’s any consolation,” said Collins, “I’d probably have warned Mr. Seeley too, had I known about you before his visit. May God watch over you, Mr. Parker. In fact, may God watch over both of you.”

SO I NOW HADa name for another party interested in Wyatt Riggins and—if the preacher was correct about that party’s intentions—not out of concern for his well-being. I called Zetta Nadeau to ask if Riggins had ever mentioned someone called Seeley, but she told me the name didn’t ring a bell. I suppose I could have tried mentioning him to Donna Lawrence at BrightBlown, though only so often did a man care to be lied to by the same person.

By then, Moxie had emailed me a PDF of the intelligence on Devin Vaughn. A lot of the property details were of no interest, but the rest confirmed that Vaughn was a) a criminal; b) a dealer in narcotics stronger than cannabis, including heroin and fentanyl; and c) hurting for money, given how many of his business interests and properties he’d been forced to sell over the last eighteen months or so, some of them for significantly less than the original purchase price.

I showered before calling Macy to tell her about my lunch with Moxie and my conversations with both Wyatt Riggins’s stepbrother and Donna Lawrence at BrightBlown.

“Are you asking me if the Portland PD is aware of Devin Vaughn’s involvement in BrightBlown?”

“No,” I said. “If I want to know something, I’ll ask you straight.”

And I meant it.

“For what it’s worth,” said Macy, “we are, but we already have enough outright criminality to occupy our time, and BrightBlown appears legit, with clear space between it and Vaughn. Given that Vaughn’s companies operate in multiple states, we’re hoping the feds will do the hard spadework for us.”

She didn’t have to elaborate; pointedly, she avoided doing so. She’d told me enough: the feds had Devin Vaughn in their sights.

“I’d let this one drop if I were you,” said Macy. “I’m not sure Wyatt Riggins is worth venturing into Vaughn’s territory to find.”

“I took Zetta’s money,” I said. “I accepted the case.”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“She’s interesting, and she’s elevated herself against the odds. If someone like that isn’t deserving of my time, no one is.”

“If one of your ancestors wasn’t a martyr,” said Macy, “I’ll be shocked.”

She wished me good night and added a murmur as she ended the call. I might have been mistaken, but I thought she said she loved me.

CHAPTERXXX

That night, I joined Angel and Louis at Isa on Portland Street, where they’d nabbed a prime window table. Across from us, the fairy lights were illuminated at Bubba’s Sulky Lounge. To its right, what had once been the more downmarket Rockin Rickey’s Tavern was an empty shell, mourned only by the terminally alcoholic. Soon, there wouldn’t be anywhere left in the city where a man could get blindly, malevolently drunk and not have do-gooders attempt to kill his buzz.