Bull Mountain (22 page)

“And his name
was Burroughs?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking sure, and that’s all I know.”

The two men sat across from each other in the breakfast nook for a long minute as Holly studied the bloodied gangster for any signs that he may have more to share. “I think I believe you, Pops,” Holly finally said. Pepé closed his eyes, lowered his head, and appeared to start praying.

Holly
shook his head slowly from side to side and picked up the phone. He hit redial and held it to his ear. “Take the boy back to his mother,” he said, then ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket.

“Now do it,” Pepé said without opening his eyes. He didn’t have to ask again. Holly lifted the Glock and shot him once in the chest, and again in the neck.

CHAPTER

O
SCAR
W
ILCOMBE

J
ACKSONVILLE,
F
LORIDA

2015

1.

The office was small, smaller than Agent Holly expected it to be. Motorcycle-enthusiast magazines and paraphernalia were scattered throughout the room.
The furniture was nice but not too nice. The paintings on the wall were cheap lithographs of much pricier real-deals, and the coffee at the self-serve station by the door was no better than that at any quick-stop—worse, maybe. Holly set the coffee on the waiting room table and thumbed through a copy of
Cycle World
, pretending not to stare at the only thing worth looking at in the room, the raven-haired
beauty behind the reception desk. He pegged her to be in her mid-thirties, closer to six than four, but not a sign of road wear on her face. Huge lips, painted the color of a shiny candy apple, pouted below a sharp nose and dark, almost navy-blue eyes. He had pictures of this one in the file he was putting together on Wilcombe, but to see her in person was breathtaking.

A bald tree trunk of
a man decked out in denim from head to toe walked out of the office behind Bianca Wilcombe and whispered something in her ear. They smiled politely at each other, and the man left the office, giving Holly the stink-eye all the way out the door. Holly winked at him, taking in the details. Committing the man’s face to memory.

“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 fucking 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 asshole gun dealer. I bust asshole 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?”

“You are a smart one, ain’t you? But I guess you’d have to be, to keep this racket up as long as you have without ever bringing the heat down on you. But that’s all over
now.”

“I assume there’s a deal to be made?”

“Look at you. You really are a thinker, aren’t you?”

“What do you want, Agent Holly?”

Holly’s smile vanished. He pulled his wallet from his pants and opened it. He took out a tattered photograph of a young woman hiding one side of her face and sitting in the grass with a dark-haired little boy. He briefly stared at the picture, then laid
it down on the desk next to his badge and ID.

Wilcombe looked at the photograph. “What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a picture.”

Wilcombe winced. “I can see that. Am I supposed to know who’s in the picture?”

“You’re supposed to, but I’m sure you don’t. People like you take a shit on so many lives, it’s probably easier to forget them than to keep track.”

Wilcombe’s face hardened
as if he’d just been slapped. He wasn’t used to being the one without leverage. He didn’t look at the picture again.

“You asked me what I want,” Holly said. “That’s what I want.” He tapped a finger on the photograph. “But I’ll never get to have it back because of you and those fucking animals you work with in the Peach State.”

Wilcombe squinted again, then removed his glasses and put them
on the desk. He waited for the rest.

“I want to know everything you know about the Burroughs family. I know a lot already, but I want to compare notes. I want to know every detail about your business with them. Times. Dates. Money. All of it. I want to know which brother you have the most direct contact with, Grizzly Adams or the crooked cop. I want you to spill your guts about every little
dirty deal you’ve made with them over the past forty years, and I’m not leaving until I’ve heard it all.”

“Then what do you plan to do with the information?”

“Really, am I supposed to answer
your
questions? You got a set of balls on you.”

Wilcombe picked up the photograph and studied it closer. His face softened. “This is personal to you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“The boy in this photo
is you, yes?”

“Ain’t I cute?”

“And this woman sitting with you. She is your mother?”

“She was. She’s dead now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I understand the bonds of family, Agent Holly.”

“Oh, yeah? Like the bond you got with your daughter out there?” Holly pointed a thumb toward the lobby. Wilcombe looked mildly surprised. “After everything else I told you, you’re surprised
about me knowing something as common knowledge as that hot piece of ass outside being your daughter?”

“I would ask that you watch how you speak of my daughter, Agent Holly.”

“I would ask that you go fuck yourself. You’re not in the position to ask me to do anything. Maybe I should go out there and tell your darling Bianca about how her daddy dearest is a gun-peddling scumbag. I bet she’d
love to find out how you pimp women to your criminal butt buddies. I wonder what kind of family bond you’d have then. No, wait.” Holly paused and scratched his head. “Doesn’t she do all your bookkeeping, too? I wonder how she could not know something was fishy after all this time. Right? She must be in on it. I wonder how that fine ass will look in an orange jumpsuit.”

“She has nothing to
do with any of this. Leave her out of it.”

“That’s up to you. Do what I tell you from here on out, and she’ll be none the wiser. She’ll get to go on thinking her daddy is a sweet old man who loves motorcycles, and you can just go die of old age somewhere, holding her hand. Which, for the record, is something my mother didn’t get to do.”

“I do not know her, your mother.”

“Not directly.
You gave her as a gift to Gareth Burroughs on the night you met him. You called a lowlife wetback by the name of Pepé Ramirez, who, in turn, fed her to that hillbilly. He then proceeded to rape and beat her before mutilating her face.” Holly was standing now, but Wilcombe couldn’t meet his eyes. Righteous indignation had that effect.

“I . . . did not know.”

Simon felt the sting of that
lie burn the entirety of his face but didn’t show it. He wasn’t ready to play that card yet. He let Wilcombe believe he was a fool. “And that’s the reason you’re still alive. Which is more than I can say for Pepé.”

“You do know that Gareth Burroughs died several years ago?” Wilcombe said.

“And good riddance to him. I wish it could have been my bullet that killed him, but sins of the father
run deep. Family bonds, right? I want them all.”

“And if I tell you everything you want to know, what happens to me?”

“You get to go home and not to a federal prison. Retire. You’re done. You’re going to sever all ties to the Burroughs clan. Nothing goes in or out. No guns. No dope. No money. Not even a Christmas card. Then you can go play shuffleboard, for all I care.”

“And that’s
it?” Wilcombe began to get a little color back in his clammy, pale skin.

“Well, there is one more thing.”

“And that is?”

“When’s your next cash run to Georgia? I need every detail. I’ll be running it.”