Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

“Fuck if I know. Some kind of kingpin, by all the heat you brought. Unless that was for whoever you shot.”

The agent kept at his paperwork.

“And killed?”

The agent moved some papers into a manila folder, stood, and left Pete alone.

Two agents came downstairs and let themselves into the cell with Pete. One of the men was clean-shaven and serious and wore a dark suit and carried a briefcase that he set on the concrete floor next to him. FBI, Pete guessed. The man crossed one leg over the other, pants pressed and neatly creased, and regarded Pete, mildly bouncing his dangling foot in its wingtip.

The other man wore jeans and a black jacket with an ATF badge sewn over the zipper pocket. He took off his black baseball cap and scratched his thinned hair and fixed the hat back on his head. He was sitting on the chair backward and, at a gesture from the man in the suit, reached into his coat pocket and dropped Pearl’s sack of coins on the floor. The sack that had been in Pete’s car. The man in the suit smirked at whatever Pete’s expression said. Then he uncrossed his legs, leaned over, and opened the sack. He fingered through the coins and picked one shot through with a swastika.

“Lovely,” he said of the coin, holding it up to the fluorescent light. He had a wry and cocksure expression that would irritate anyone at all.

“Where did these come from?” the ATF agent asked.

Pete decided he wasn’t going to say a thing. He said, “I’m not saying shit about shit until I get a lawyer.”

He coughed. His stomach muscles convulsed painfully. He held his side wincing.

The suit’s mouth turned up at its corners in an expectant grin.

Pete said again that he wanted counsel.

“Been to Reno recently?” the suit asked.

From the agents’ expressions Pete was certain that his face showed that he had. He swallowed, winced again. Shit. He swallowed and he winced.

“Lawyer,” he croaked.

“Look,” the suit said, “every bank in the country is watching for these coins. They get one, they call the Secret Service. The Treasury Department runs it down to Jim here and Jim calls me. I’m FBI. So you got Justice and Treasury crawling up your ass right now. You and Jeremiah Pearl and the Posse Comitatus and Truppe Schweigen have the federal government’s full fucking attention. Congratulations.”

“You lost me,” Pete said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The suit opened his briefcase and removed a file folder and handed Pete a photograph. A burnt-out armored truck. Another color photo of two dead security guards prone in livid pools of blood. He handed over another and another, told Pete of the robberies depicted in them, and also of bombings and murders. A synagogue. A little girl who bled out from the holes made by the nails and screws of a pipe bomb. He told Pete about Posse Comitatus, the separatist organization behind it, about the clandestine arm or offshoot called Truppe Schweigen, which was German for “Silent Corps” and which specialized in the financial activities, mainly counterfeiting. Piles of phony tens and twenties. They defaced currency and clogged the courts with spurious liens.

Pete looked from the ATF to the FBI agent and snorted weirdly in astonishment.

“You really think I’m one of these guys?” Pete asked. “I’m a social worker. That fucked-up woman you got, I’m her social worker.”

“But how do you know Pearl?” the ATF agent asked.

“How do you think? I’m a social worker . He has no job and many kids.”

Pete thrust the pictures back, but the suit wouldn’t take them. Pete turned them over and dropped them on the concrete.

“Why were you in Texas the day the president was shot?” the suit asked him.

“What? How did you—?”

“Just answer the question. What were you doing in Texas?”

“This is insane. I want a lawyer.”

“And Indiana? Did you visit Pearl’s family in Gnaw Bone? Or is Jeremiah Pearl hiding somewhere in Gnaw Bone right now? Is that why you went there?”

The agents both watched him impassively. The suit leaned forward with his hands on his knees.

“You already admitted to leaving a hundred of these coins in Reno, which you know is illegal—”

“No, I don’t know that’s illegal — you can flatten a penny in one of those machines down in Yellowstone and stamp a buffalo on—”

“Nobody tries to pass one of those. You put dozens of these coins in the slot machines down there—”

“And they fell right through into the tray—”

“So you were in Reno.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“You can get five years for this.”

“Counsel,” Pete said flatly.

The FBI agent cleared his throat and sat up.

“Why don’t you have a case on Jeremiah Pearl in all that paperwork in your car?”

“Counsel.”

“I’ll be honest,” the FBI agent said. “You don’t look like a neo-Nazi. You don’t look like a gunrunner. But you do look like a goddamn hippie anarchist. The hair and the jacket and the fuckin attitude. And here you are swept up in an amphetamine bust, and… I just don’t know. What the hell are you, Peter Snow?”

Pete stared at the floor, thinking, concentrating on the idea that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. Do not be scared. It’s not like you knowingly did anything wrong. Assuming it was illegal to pass Pearl’s fucked-up coins. Five years. That couldn’t be right. Fuck this guy. Fuck him all day. They’d have to be crazy to think you’re moonlighting as some kind of separatist. You’re a social worker.

“I want a lawyer.”

Several moments passed.

The suit bent over and plucked the photos off the floor.

“Come on, Jim,” he said.

“Be a minute,” the ATF agent said.

The suit shrugged and left the cage, and the ATF agent and Pete sat together in silence until the suit departed up the stairs. The desk agent returned and began hunting and pecking at a typewriter. Each keystroke shot off the concrete walls and floor. The ATF agent stood, went to the cage door, and asked the desk agent if he would mind grabbing them a couple coffees. The man sighed heavily, pushed himself up, clomped to the door, and left them alone.

The ATF agent returned to his chair.

“My name’s Jim. Jim Pinkerton, Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Division of the Treasury. I am the liaison to the Secret Service on all matters regarding currency as it pertains to Jeremiah Pearl.”

“I’m delighted all to pieces, Jim.”

“The point I’m making is I have nothing to do with the investigations regarding his threats to the president.”

“Thanks for clearing that up.”

“You’re pretty punchy today aren’t you?”

“Interesting word choice.”

“Why?”

“I want a lawyer.”

Pinkerton leaned back, holding the armrests of the chair, and sighed at the ceiling.

“The people in the house, they were clients of yours.”

Pete nodded.

“You didn’t know the guy who was killed.”

“I have no idea who you killed.”

“Speed supplier out of Denver. Two years of DEA work and no conviction because the fucker wouldn’t stand down.”

“My condolences.”

“But you were just there to check on the girl.”

Pete sighed.

“What’s gonna happen to her?” Pinkerton asked. “I mean, now that her mother is in custody.”

“Someone will call my office and wait for me to come and get her.”

“They won’t call someone here in Kalispell?”

“I’m the someone in Kalispell. This is my region.”

“From Tenmile all the way to here? That’s a lot of area for you to cover.” Pinkerton chewed his cheek. “So, you need to get out of here. To help the girl. Maybe we can make a deal so you can do that.”