Seeing Red(123)

“Whatever your con is this time, Trapper, I’m not falling for it.”

“No con. Hadn’t you heard? Wilcox is dead.”

“Oh, I heard all the gory details. Your girlfriend reported them from outside the Wilcox mansion.”

“What you don’t know, but I think that maybe now is the time to enlighten you, is that Kerra and I were inside the mansion last night with Wilcox.”

Hank guffawed.

“Cross my heart.”

“You went to see Wilcox?”

“After leaving you.”

“And he welcomed you with open arms?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But over the past few days, he and I had formed a mutually beneficial quasi-partnership.” Trapper stopped and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see you’re taken aback. You didn’t know that.” He sighed and ruefully shook his head. “Yeah, time was that Tom even had me at gunpoint but couldn’t bring himself to kill me. Instead we talked through our differences—”

“Get back to last night.”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me? I don’t believe you will. Although you’ve already hurt my feelings. I know you’re pissed at me for sending you out to that line shack, but isn’t this taking your payback a little far?”

“Get on with it,” Hank snapped.

“I forgot where I was. Oh, yeah. We three—Wilcox, Kerra, and I—had two interesting conversations, the most recent being around one o’clock this morning.”

“Did you tell him that Dad had betrayed him?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t give a damn if you believe it or not. It’s the truth.”

“Then what was discussed during this meeting which I still don’t believe ever took place?”

“Serious stuff, and I’m not joshing you. Wilcox had the one thing, shy of a signed confession, that would persuade the feds to reopen the Pegasus bombing case. He agreed to give it to me.”

“Wilcox wouldn’t give you the time of day, much less anything that would incriminate him.”

“Ordinarily, no. At first he was coy, the dealmaker, the wheeler-dealer. You know how he was. He was holding out for a guarantee of full immunity. But those are details that probably don’t interest you or anyone except federal prosecutors.”

“Get on with it,” Hank repeated, this time straining the words between his teeth.

“If you’d stop interrupting … Suffice to say only one thing would have compelled Wilcox to come to a burnout like me and ask me to negotiate a deal for him.”

“Well?”

“Vengeance for his daughter’s murder.”

Hank blinked, always a giveaway.

“He made me promise to make that a priority.” Speaking softly, Trapper said, “Who’d you get to do it for you? Because I know you don’t have the stomach or the balls to have done it yourself.”

“Shut up, Trapper.”

He smiled. “Fine. I’ll shut up. Just one last thing. I repeat: You. Are. So. Screwed. You can kill me, you can kill The Major, but Kerra was with me last night. She knows all about Wilcox’s pledge, signed by people who do dirty deeds for him. She’ll make certain that everybody on it is exposed and made to answer for his crimes.”

Hank laughed out loud. “Trapper, Trapper, Trapper. Always trying to hoodwink me. But it won’t work this time, because I didn’t sign that ridiculous pledge.” He adopted a Count Dracula reverberation. “Down into the bank vault. Down long dark corridors to the inner chamber.”

Returning to his normal voice, he said, “I was put through the wringer just like Dad described to you last night. Wilcox smoothly reminded me how much he had donated to the tabernacle building fund. With a single stroke of his Mont Blanc, he had saved my fledgling TV ministry. The bill was due, he said. Words to that effect. Sign on the dotted line.

“But, I said, ‘Not so fast, Thomas.’ See, the previous Sunday, I had shared the good news of his generosity from the pulpit. Hallelujah! All saints be praised!” He laughed again. “What was he going to do? Take the money back? Welsh on an offering made to God Almighty?”

“What did he want from you? Absolution?”

“Very little, actually. He was growing increasingly concerned that Dad would crack. He was getting older, more sentimental, maudlin when he drank too much, which was all the time. Wilcox wanted me to do to him what Dad had been doing to The Major.”

“Spying.”

The Major’s succinct remark surprised Trapper. Sensing that, The Major looked up at him. “Hank told me about your visit with Glenn last night, his confessions.”

“It wasn’t an easy or pleasant hour for me.”

“I believe that, John.”

The Major looked dejected and resigned, but even more worrisome to Trapper was that he seemed to be physically diminishing with every passing moment. He wanted to hear everything Hank had to say about his adversarial relationship with Wilcox, but he needed to hurry him along.

“Okay, so you refused to sign Wilcox’s pledge. He took umbrage with your audacity, got huffy, issued some threats. ‘You don’t have any idea who you’re up against.’ That kind of thing. But Wilcox had good game.”