His piece said, Dale slumped back against the wall and pulled his hand down his face. The skin moved in a way that was subtly wrong. Too loose on his bones, and it didn’t spring back into place as quickly as it should.
“I don’t need to,” Ledger said. “Either you help me, and I don’t tell anyone, or you don’t help me, and I tell everyone that you did. It’s up to you.”
Dale stared at him for a moment, and then he shook his head slightly. “Don’t.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Ledger said. “You? You have two.”
There was silence. Dale nervously rubbed his hands down his thighs. Finally, he closed his eyes and dropped his head forward.
“I don’t know who they are,” he said. “I can’t tell you that.”
Ledger didn’t know if he believed that. He imagined it was hard to put the fear of God into a dead man, harder still by proxy. They could circle back to that, though.
“What can you tell me?” Ledger asked. “Start there.”
Dale shrugged and spread both his hands. “All I know is what they told me, and that wasn’t much,” he said. “Someone brings me the books. I keep them until someone else comes to collect them. After a couple of days… sometimes weeks… reverse the process. I just hold the books. I don’t ask any questions.”
“But you did.”
“I don’t know what—”
“They threatened you once,” Ledger said. “It had to be for something.”
It took a second, but finally, Dale took a deep breath he probably didn’t need to take. He tilted his head toward Ledger and dropped his voice to a murmur.
“I have more than one client. They all have their own methods,” he said. “Some of them send letters or slip postcards in as bookmarks. Bell had a cipher. That’s what he used to send messages to his associates. I don’t know how to read the code. I didn’t want to know what he was doing.”
“They.”
Dale stared at him.
“I know the church picked up and dropped off Bell’s books on his end,” Ledger said. “But who was waiting for them?”
“Nobody.”
“It had to be somebody.”
That was obvious. It made Dale lean back until his head rested against the wall. He shook his head again.
“Bell’s dead. You say. I hope,” Dale said. “His partner isn’t. When he finds out that I betrayed him…”
“I won’t tell him.”
“You will,” Dale said. His mouth twisted into a nervous grin, and he nodded as if he had just confirmed something to himself. “You would.”
Ledger was ready to grab Dale if he ran again. Instead, the shorter man pushed himself off the wall and swung a wild, wide roundhouse at Ledger’s head. Bony knuckles caught Ledger in the side of the face, and he staggered back a step. He bit his tongue, his teeth clipping a long sliver off the edge, and tasted the coppery salt of it in the back of his throat. Hot pain spread through the bones of his skull.
That’swhen Dale ran, racing out of the alley and back onto the main street.
Ledger spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground and chased after him. This time Dale wasn’t trying to blend with the crowd. He shoved a kid out of the way, his hand on its head, and dodged the mom’s attempt to grab him. Two men were trying to load a box into a car, and he pushed past them.
“Leave me alone!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I can’t tell you.”
“Hey,” someone said.
“What are you doing?” from someone else.
Someone grabbed Ledger’s collar. He dipped his shoulder and pulled away before they could get a good grip.
