Bull Mountain(64)

“Mr. Holly?” Bianca said. “Mr. Wilcombe will see you now.”

“Thanks.” Holly laid the magazine back down on the table, stood, and walked past Bianca to the office door. He hoped she would give him the same smile she’d given the blue-jean giant a moment ago. She didn’t. She didn’t even look.

2.

“Agent Holly. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. If I’d known you were coming, I would have cleared my calendar.” Oscar Wilcombe was pushing seventy and looked every bit of it. His small frame hunched over as he walked and, at some point over the past few years, he’d lost anything that resembled a neck. His head looked more like it sprouted directly from the middle of his shoulders, like he was a human/turtle hybrid. His gray flannel suit hung off him like it was still on the hanger, and his hair had been reduced to a few gray survivors stretched out over his bald head in a comb-over that even he had to know looked ridiculous. He reached out a delicate, thin hand and Holly shook it, careful not to break it.

“Well, you know us federal-agent types. We like to keep people guessing. If we told you we were coming, you’d have time to prepare.”

Wilcombe squinted over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Do I need time to prepare?”

“That remains to be seen.”

Wilcombe walked back around his desk and took a seat. He motioned for Holly to do the same in the armchair across from him. “What is this about, Mr. Holly?”

“Agent.”

“Huh?” The old man squinted again.

“It’s Agent Holly. Not Mister. You need to remember that, because I don’t want any confusion about how important this conversation is going to be to you.”

“Umm, okay.” Wilcombe sat back and steepled his fingers in his lap.

“See, me being a federal agent lends a little more weight to what I’m about to tell you. You know what I mean?”

“I suppose I do.”

“I hate that word.”

“What word?”

“Suppose. You either do or you don’t. It’s just an unnecessary word people throw in to sound pretentious. Are you trying to sound pretentious, Mr. Wilcombe?”

Wilcombe shifted in his seat and pushed up his glasses. “Agent Holly, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you again, what this is about.”

“That’s good,” Holly said, and smiled his shark smile.

Wilcombe was confused. “What’s good?”

“That you’re afraid. I would be, too, if I were in your position.”

“And what position is that?”

Holly took his badge out of the breast pocket of his blazer and set it on Wilcombe’s desk. He opened the leather bifold and turned the ID to face the old man.

“Can you read that?”

Wilcombe leaned in and examined the credentials but didn’t touch them.

“That says ATF,” Holly said, “which stands for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. So it’s understandable for you to be pissing into your Depends having me sitting in your little office here. I mean, seeing that you make your money selling illegal firearms.” Holly tapped the big letter F on his ID.

Wilcombe did his best to look indignant. “I have no idea what you’re—”

“Stop, old man. Don’t give me the I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about speech. I know everything—ev-ery-thing.”

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Holly shook his head and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly.

“Okay. Here’s the deal. That sentence, the very sentence I told you not to say, is the last lie you get to tell me. From here on out, you and me are going to talk openly, and more important, honestly, or I’m going to get up, thank you for your time, go outside, and give my people the go-ahead to rush the factory here in Jacksonville and have them take a good look at the east building. Then I’ll call my teams waiting in Tampa at 1121 Maple Springs to have them raid that gun plant, too. The other one in Pensacola isn’t active right now, but I bet the storage facilities are packed to the gills with assault rifles in boxes waiting to be shipped out to Atlanta.”

Wilcombe’s indignation vanished, but Holly kept going. “The seven whorehouses you have scattered throughout this fine state and the shipments of gun parts and raw methylamine you receive at your warehouse at the port of Tampa will have to wait, but I bet my boys with Customs and the FBI are gonna have a f*cking field day with them.”

Wilcombe’s face was pale now, and a light sheen of sweat broke out on the paper-thin skin of his forehead. Holly smiled.

“Clearly this is a misunderstanding,” Wilcombe said.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Holly said, waving one finger in the air. “What did I just say about lying to me?”

Wilcombe collected himself and thought before he spoke another word. “Why are you here?”

“I thought that we’d established that already. You’re an * gun dealer. I bust * gun dealers. We’re a perfect fit.”

“Allow me to rephrase. If you know all of this about me—about my business—and the ATF is set up outside all of these places you’ve mentioned, then again I ask, why are you here? Why isn’t this office being flooded with more of your people to take me into custody? What are you waiting for?”