Free The Triggerman Dance by T. Jefferson Parker

smiled rather sourly, but loaded some of the steaming carnitas into a tortilla. "Evan loves to find a sore spot, then heal it," he said. "Then rip it open again, then heal it. He's a sadist with a Christ complex, or a Christ with a sadistic side—I haven't figured out which. One of the comforts of my life is that he lives and works on the other side of the continent."
Dumars laughed. "You'd join him in a heartbeat in Washington, if you could."
"No," said Weinstein with his customary gravity. "Wayfarer first. Everything else can wait."
Dumars did one of those downspiraling little chuckles meant to clear the stage.
"You a drinking man, John?" asked Evan.
"When I feel like it."
"Feel like it often?"
"Pretty much so."
"I do, too. Skipped all our wars, didn't you?"
"I was too young for Vietnam."
"Ever feel like you missed out?"
"I had a friend in Grenada. One in the Gulf. They wrote and we talked. I felt like I'd missed little wars and wasn't the worse for it. They did a good enough job without me."
"Would you have gone, in a draft?"
"Sure. They did."
"How come you never registered?"
"I actually forgot. No action when I was eighteen. No draft. No point in it."
"You committed a felony by not seeing the point in it."
"You could arrest me," said John.
"No. That helps us. That's okay. When this is all over and it's become a fiasco, you—an alcoholic, draft-dodging, abortion-happy, meat-hunting woman stealer—will be lots easier to discredit."
"The hood I wore will help, too."
Weinstein almost choked on his tea. "Why do you talk like that, Evan?"
"I'm paid to talk like that. I'm the tire-kicker, John, the guy with fingers in the carb. You're lucky, though, because you don't have to deal with me. Young Joshua here does. The Bureau is annealing him in my still strong but fading flame. My task here is to make sure we aren't going into an operation with a complete idiot—I'm speaking now of you. My task is to make sure the Bureau gets what it wants and that you don't get dead. We're dealing with assassins. Anybody who'd shoot a woman from three hundred yards would shoot you in the face from two. So if I'm a little blunt, consider it a thorough check under the hood."
"Check away."
"Why do you want to do this?" Evan asked.
John didn't answer immediately. Joshua had told him that this question would come, and that his answer must be right. The right answer, Joshua had said, was to avenge the death of Rebecca Harris. John could not indicate that the arrest of Wayfarer would complete some personal cycle for him, could not imply great personal hatred of Wayfarer, could not suggest that he, John, was after any form of redemption. His desire was to be nothing other than a temporary tool for the execution of justice. You are just doing your duty—like voting. But John had never cottoned to Joshua's instruction on this point.
"Because I hate the bastard who shot Rebecca, and I'd like to see him rot in jail. It would make me feel better."
Weinstein's face reddened, so he directed it down toward his plate. Dumars just looked at John, then at Evan.
Evan blinked, then smiled. "Tugging at the collar a little early, aren't you? Joshua will make you pay for that little outburst. That kind of heated honesty might, under the coming circumstances, get you killed."
"You need to know," said John. "You already know. If you didn't, I wouldn't be here. Wayfarer doesn't."
"Christ in heaven let's hope not." ,
Weinstein was shaking his head toward his plate, as if the carnitas had misbehaved.
"But seriously, John, we have no proof at all that Wayfarer even knows who Rebecca Harris was. He's an innocent man. And God knows, he's lethal. That, my friend, is a dangerous combination."
"I take one step at a time. That's all. One little step at a time. I trust these two people."
Weinstein sighed and finally looked up.
Evan took a long moment to study John, then commenced building another pork taco. "I'm curious," he said finally. "I'm curious about how it felt to be