Linc and I drove away from the house in silence. There wasn’t much for either of us to say and he seemed to have lost the fight I’d seen in him earlier.
I called Wellton, told him I was bringing Linc Pluto in and that I’d explain when we got there. He didn’t seem pleased, but I hung up before he could suggest anything else.
When we arrived at the station, Linc got out without protesting. Wellton met us as we came through the doors.
He looked Linc up and down, then turned to me. “This was the kid you couldn’t find?”
“Sneaky. Kids are sneaky.”
Linc stared at his shoes.
Wellton waved an officer over. He nodded at Linc and the officer moved Linc’s hands behind him and cuffed him.
“Can you just put him in holding for now?” I said.
Wellton lifted his chin at the cop and he escorted Linc down the hallway.
I followed Wellton up to his office.
“This is the kid with the guns, right?” Wellton asked, sliding into the chair behind his desk.
“The guns belonged to his father,” I said, sitting down in the metal chair opposite the desk, trying to buy Linc a little leeway. “Maybe he didn’t know they were there.”
“They were where his underwear should’ve been.”
“He’s had a rough time of it. He’d be a huge sympathy case if you charged him.”
Wellton shook his head. “Fine. Wanna tell me why I’m holding this kid, then?”
I explained about Dana finding the house in OB, my conversation with Linc, and our surprise visitors.
“You’re telling me Wizard Matellion saved your ass?” Wellton said when I’d finished.
“Not on the record, I’m not. Off the record, yeah, I guess he did.”
“We go on the record, I’d have something solid on Matellion,” Wellton said quietly. “Finally.”
“Matellion didn’t pull the trigger and I’ll never repeat what I just told you.”
The room went quiet. Wellton couldn’t make me talk, but he could make my life difficult. But I wasn’t sure he could make it more difficult than Wizard Matellion if I went back on my word.
“Just because he didn’t let Moreno kill you doesn’t make him a good guy,” Wellton said.
“I know that.”
Wellton stared hard at me for a while. It didn’t change my mind.
“What do you want me to do with this kid?” he finally asked.
“Can you hold him for a little bit?” I asked. “Let me see if I can fix the rest of this.”
“What does fix mean?”
I shrugged.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Wellton said. “I don’t understand white-guy nonchalance.”
“There are still some loose ends,” I said. “He’s safer here for a little while.”
“What loose ends?”
“Just a few things, couple of people I need to talk to.”
We stared at each other, him trying to read me, me attempting to keep him from seeing anything.
“What about our skinhead friends?” Wellton asked.
“That’s why I want Linc here. They still want him.”
“You gonna go talk to them, too?” he asked, a tiny smile mocking me.
“Something like that.”
The smile disintegrated and he pointed a stubby finger at me. “As soon as we-and by we, I mean those of us that are cops-find them, we’ve got them on assault for you and two murders. That’s enough to make me forget about the weapons charge against Pluto. And that’s plenty enough reason for them to stay alive.”
“If you find them.”
“We will find them,” he growled.
I sat motionless. I thought back to my first conversation with Professor Famazio, when he indicated that sometimes the skinheads benefited from friends in higher places. Sometimes even the law wasn’t enough.
“Neither of them is worth it,” Wellton said quietly, his eyes staring intently at me over the desk. “Neither of them.”
“I know that.”
“I know that you know that, Braddock. What I want to make sure of is that you don’t do something in spite of it.”
The silence sat heavy in the room between us for a few minutes.
“What happened to you sucked,” he finally said. “No doubt about it. But if you take them out, if you do exactly what you say you’re trying to prevent from happening to the Pluto kid, then you haven’t helped anyone and you’ve completely fucked yourself up.”
I didn’t disagree with anything Wellton was saying. All of his words made sense. But there were other things that made sense to me, too, and I wasn’t sure which of them was more right.
“I’m talking to a brick wall,” Wellton said, disgusted at my refusal to engage in the conversation. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t even try.” He paused. “I’ll hold the kid for forty-eight hours.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“That’s it,” Wellton said. “Do whatever you’re gonna do. Make it right.” His eyes narrowed. “For Pluto. Not for you.”
I was pretty sure he knew his words were going to be in vain. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his tone.
Or maybe he just knew I didn’t care what he said.