Page 84 of I Will Find You

Eddie doesn’t love where this conversation is headed. “Yeah, I guess. Davey, why are you asking me all this?”

“I need to talk to Kyle.”

Silence.

“Kyle as in Skunk Kyle?”

“They still call him that?”

“He prefers it.”

That had been his nickname when we were kids. I don’t remember when Kyle moved to town. First grade, maybe second. He had the white forelock even then. With the white streak against the black hair and kids being kids, he immediately got the obvious nickname Skunk. Some kids would have hated that. Young Kyle seemed to revel in it.

“Let me get this straight,” Eddie says. “You want to talk to Skunk Kyle about an old debt?”

“Yes.”

Eddie whistled. “You remember him, right?”

“Yes.”

“Remember when he pushed Lisa Millstone off that roof when we were nine?”

“I do.”

“And Mrs. Bailey’s cats. The ones that kept disappearing when we were like, twelve?”

“Yes.”

“And the Pallone girl. What was her name again? Mary Anne—”

“I remember,” I say.

“Skunk hasn’t gotten better, Davey.”

“I know. I assume he still works for the Fishers?”

Eddie gives his face a vigorous rub with his right hand. “You going to tell me what this is about?”

I see no reason not to. “I think the Fishers kidnapped my son and set me up for murder.”

I give him the abridged version. Eddie doesn’t tell me I’m crazy, but he thinks it. I show him the amusement-park photo. He looks at it quickly, but his eyes stay mostly on me. He drops his cigarette butt to the cracked pavement and lights another one. He doesn’t interrupt.

When I finish, Eddie says, “I’m not going to try to talk you out of this. You’re a big boy.”

“I appreciate that. You can set it up?”

“I can make a call.”

“Thank you.”

“You know the old man retired, right?”

“Nicky Fisher retired?” I say.

“Yep, retired, moved someplace warm. I hear Nicky golfs every day now. Spent his life murdering, robbing, extorting, pillaging, maiming, but now he’s in his eighties enjoying golf and spa massages and dinners out in Florida. Karma, right?”

“So who’s the boss now?”

---