Max found a payphone on 5th Street and called Striker Swan.
Striker was Billy Ray Swan's uncle. He'd done ten years for armed robbery. He'd been a serious badass before he'd gone away. He'd met his match behind bars and the experience had changed him from the inside out. He'd been rehabilitated of his worst excesses but he still wasn't doing straight time, making his living mostly running hot cars in and out of the state, yet the violence he'd been notorious for in his youth never re-entered the frame.
He'd loved his little nephew more than he'd loved anyone in his whole life-except, perhaps, for his sister-in-law Rachel on that one hot night when Billy Ray was conceived, or so people said. The two did look more than a little alike, even though that could just have been the Swan family genes. Whatever the reality, Striker had been the most broken up by the kid's murder.
Swan answered the phone at the fifth ring. Max spoke to him through a handkerchief over the receiver and in the only accent he could make fly-Jimmy Carter Jiowja.
'Striker?'
'Yeah,' Striker answered in a yawn. 'Who's this?'
'Never mind that. I got me a message to give you. Dean Waychek, guy that killed lil' Billy Ray? Wanna know where you can find him?'
Max didn't wait to hear the answer. He told him.
Max had met Swan once, very briefly, outside the police station, the day Waychek had been freed. Max had apologized to him. Striker-six feet two of white-trash muscle, tattoos and freckles-had given Max the briefest of nods and the faintest of smiles, as if to say, 'You're a pig, so I hate you, but you're OK.'
Striker didn't say a word on the phone. He didn't even reply when Max asked him if he'd got the name of the motel.
But Max knew he'd got it all right.
Max hung up and got back in his car.
As he drove away he thought of Dean Waychek, remembered his smugness in the interrogation room, the way he'd been so sure he was going to get away with it.
'Adios, motherfucker,' Max said.