“Aw, Jesus, where are they?”
“At Tom Jones’s place.”
Virgil got the location and drove over in a hurry. At Jones’s house, he found Johnson arguing with four men in camo, including Winky Butterfield.
All of them turned to look when Virgil drove in, and when he got out of his truck, Butterfield said to Johnson, “Goddamnit, you weren’t supposed to tell him.”
“I got no choice. Virgil’s my guy and I can’t turn my back on him,” Johnson said. “He’s got his reasons for working the way he is.”
“What reasons?” one of the men asked. Virgil found out later he was Jones.
Instead of answering, Virgil asked Johnson, “Can you trust these guys? They got any relations up Orly’s Creek?”
The men all looked at each other, then Butterfield said, “No, none of us do,” and Johnson said, “Yeah, you could trust them. Are you going to tell them?”
Virgil said, “Listen, men. This is supposed to be top secret, but I’m telling you anyway. You tell anybody else, you could go to prison for a long time. Anybody not want to hear what I’m going to say, you better walk away. If you listen, and you tell anyone, including your wives, and the word gets out, we will track it down, and you will go to prison.”
The men all looked at each other again, then Butterfield said, “What the hell are you talking about, Virgil?”
“Anybody walking away?” Virgil asked.
They all shook their heads, and Virgil said, “Okay. Johnson and I went up there and scouted the valley.”
“Didn’t know that,” Jones said.
“’Cause we didn’t tell you. We didn’t find the dogs, but we did find a commercial-sized meth lab. The place is under surveillance by the federal government right now. As soon as we nail the people running the lab, we’ll go looking for the dogs.”
One of the men smiled and said, “My goodness. That is a reason.”
“But what about the dogs?” Butterfield asked. “Goddamn meth labs are all over the place—the goddamned dogs are like my goddamn children.”
“Look: that’s the reason we have you guys sitting out by the river, watching people coming and going—we don’t want to let the dogs out of there,” Virgil said. “We think they’re up on the south hill, which is hard to get at, but we can hear them barking at night. So as soon as the feds move, which has to be any day now—I’m kind of surprised that they haven’t gone already—we’ll be up there after the dogs. And if somebody tries to move them before then, we should see them.”
“They could be torturing them,” Butterfield said.
“Probably not, if they’re gathering them up to sell them,” Virgil said. “Look, guys, give me a couple more days, and we’ll be all over the dogs.”
Once again, they all looked around, then Jones said, “Two days, Virgil. Then we’re gonna have to do something.”
—
JOHNSON CAME and sat in Virgil’s truck while he made a call to Gomez: “Anything happening up there at all?”
“Yeah, we saw a guy go up there yesterday in one of those Gator utility vehicles,” Gomez said. “He was dropping stuff off, it looked like. I think they’re getting ready to roll some smoke. You getting antsy?”
Virgil explained about the dog owners, and Gomez said, “Oh boy. All we need is a bunch of rednecks running through there with rifles. If it looks like you can’t hold them off, call me—I’ll come down and preach a sermon to them.”