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country.”
    “No,” Lennox says, pointing with his shaking finger as if it was a knife. “No, you can’t do this. You.” He stops, looking at Gabe and then at Ross. “You fucking know .”
    “Know what, Mr. Lennox?” Gabe asks quietly.
    “No. Ah-ah-ah,” Ross says suddenly, shaking her head. “Mr. Lennox is not obligated to answer you.”
    “But he does ,” Lennox says, pointing again. “You and your family. Keeping the peace like that. You fucking know.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “You fucking know. Well, your people might make a living double-crossing, but I’m damned if I’m going back on my word, so you just put an iron bolt through my hand and send me off to a work camp. You tell your old man I’m not talking, and I never woulda talked. You tell him he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
    James turns back to Lennox. “Are you threatening my father, Mr. Lennox?”
    Lennox shakes his head, grins. “No. Just telling it like it is. He’ll get what’s coming to him. You can tell him I guarantee it.”
    “I think that’s enough,” Ross says, stepping forward. “Mr. Lennox is agitated. He’s been sleep deprived, and he’s being pressured to speak. This interview is over.”
    Gabe looks at James, then sighs and shrugs. “Good try,” he mouths.
    James gets to his feet, and Gabe comes over to him.
    “C’mon, fuck this guy,” Gabe whispers. They always do this after a bad interview, confer quietly while still in the room. Makes it look like the two of them maybe learned something important when really it was a total wash. “Asshole just wasted our time.”
    “Might have gone better if I hadn’t been here,” James says, testing a bit to see what Gabe got from what was said, to see if he noticed, if anything seemed weird to him.
    “He’s just jerking us around,” Gabe says, shrugging. He goes over to the door and buzzes the guard. James goes with him, the two of them still talking real soft. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”
    Relief washes over James like a wave. “Yeah,” he whispers. “The renos are done at the Gory Locks.” It’s just across the old hanging square, and Gabe knows it’s a favorite haunt of James’s. “Burger and beer?”
    Gabe nods. “Suits me.”
     
     
    GABE’S PROMISED to put in time at a family dinner, so he doesn’t stay. After he goes, James slides away from the table they’d occupied and moves on up to the bar. He nods at Brett, the white bartender with the swirling tattoos and huge earplugs, grins at her, and when she says, “Usual?” he answers, “Yeah, and a double of the Birnam’s, neat.”
    “Celebrating?”
    “Sure,” he says and swaps his credit card for the glass of blood-warm whiskey, then the beer with the ice coming in flakes off the side of the glass. He didn’t mean to order two drinks off the bat like that, but if you can’t have whiskey when you thought your dirty little secret was going to come out, you can never have whiskey. When Brett gives him the raised eyebrow, he grins at her. “Been a long, dry day,” he says.
    “You gonna put anything unfermented into your belly?”
    “I had a burger.”
    “Like two hours ago.”
    He shrugs. “How ’bout a grilled cheese?” he asks. Comfort food.
    “You want a deep-fried pickle with it? Stick with a theme?”
    He laughs. “I sure as hell do,” he says.
     
     
    LATE. NOT sure how much time has passed. Brett slides his credit card back to him, and he gets his greasy fingerprints all over the black plastic. “Thanks,” he tells her. She gives him a cockeyed grin.
    “You get home safe now, you hear?” she says.
    He didn’t realize he was going. Must be late.
    “Yeah. Will. Thanks, Brett.”
    He slides off the stool. It’s always harder to stand up than he thinks it’s going to be. They should make people stand when they drink so they know how drunk they’re getting. He tells her so. She tells him good night.
     
     
    HE HANGS around outside,