Henry laughed painfully. He’d been through a hell of a lot more changes than that in the past two days.
“Well, I guess you found me,” said the man. “What you doin’ out here? I thought you were in the hospital.”
“I sneaked out.” Henry cocked his head. “Who are you?”
“Sleepy Johnston. I’m from Wisner, originally. I been living in Detroit for the past forty-one years.”
This revelation arced like lightning through Henry’s narcotic fog. One of Albert’s boys, he thought. With considerable effort, he opened the door and got out of the Impala, a movement that quickly punctured his OxyContin cushion.
Sleepy Johnston got out and carefully shook his hand, each man assessing the other. With gray hair and whiskers showing under his Detroit Tigers cap, Sleepy looked close to seventy, but his body appeared strong and healthy.
“Did you work for Albert Norris?” Henry asked. “I don’t remember you.”
After he puzzled out Henry’s mumbled words, Johnston smiled. “Not officially. But I hung around the store whenever I could. By the time you came along, I was on the road, playing with bands. I only came back this way for family reunion gigs, things like that. That’s how I met Pooky. He sat in with my band a couple times. But I knew Jimmy and Luther real good.”
Henry shook his head, still dazed by the sudden appearance of a man he had hunted so hard.
“So,” Sleepy went on, “why’d you sneak out of the hospital?”
A knot of foreboding formed in Henry’s stomach. He pointed at the darkened Royal house. “I’ve come to see the man who lives in there. He killed my girlfriend tonight. And he damn near killed me.”
It took Johnston a while to make out the words, but as he absorbed their meaning, his eyes widened. “Have you come to kill Old Man Royal?”
Henry thought about this. “I don’t know. I just had to come. When a man kills the woman you love, you’re supposed to do something about it. Aren’t you?”
“I reckon so. But there’s a lot of distance between ‘s’posed to’ and actually doing. I can tell you all about that.”
“Have you seen Brody here tonight?” Henry asked. “Is he in there?”
Sleepy licked his lips and nodded. “He’s in there, all right. Just before you got here, two of Brody’s thugs drove up in a van. They took a man and woman into the basement, all tied up.”
Henry felt adrenaline rush into his bloodstream, mixing with the heady cocktail of drugs that were keeping him upright. “Black or white?”
“White, both of them.”
“What did they look like?”
Sleepy ran a hand across his mouth, thinking. “Tall man, dressed pretty good. The woman had dark hair, classy looking. I was prowling back near the garage, and I saw the bastards drag them out of the van.”
Penn Cage and Caitlin Masters. Henry knew it as surely as he knew that he had to abandon his confrontation plan and call for help.
“What you doing?” called Sleepy as Henry turned and opened his passenger door.
“I’m—” Henry slapped his forehead. In his haste at the hospital, he’d forgotten to ask his mother for her cell phone. The drugs were having more of an effect than he’d realized. He turned around. “We need to call for help. Not the local police. We can’t trust them. We need the FBI. Or … wait.” Henry fought through the cobwebs in his head. “Maybe we should call Royal’s house. Let him know we know they have the mayor and his girlfriend in there.”
“The mayor? Hold on,” said Sleepy. “I don’t know any of those numbers.”
“Well, we could call Information—”
“Hands up!” ordered a sharp voice from behind Sleepy.
A middle-aged white man in a dark jacket held a pistol to the back of Sleepy’s head.
There’s the guard, thought Henry numbly. The real one this time.
Sleepy put up his hands, and Henry slowly followed his example. He thought of the shotgun in the backseat of his mother’s car, but he couldn’t make a move toward it without endangering Sleepy. Especially in his current condition.
The guard searched Sleepy’s windbreaker pockets and pulled out his cell phone. Taking a step back, he dropped it on the asphalt and crushed it with his boot heel. Then he walked forward and patted down Henry.
“You got a gun in that truck?” he asked Sleepy, straightening up. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the driver’s door of the truck. “Move back,” he ordered. Then he searched the truck, quickly coming up with what appeared to be a small-caliber revolver.