“We don’t think you did anything,” Rae said. “We’re doing research on a whole bunch of organizations in the Washington area, trying to make some important connections. We understand you’re the, uh, president of a group called Forlorn Hope?”
“That’s correct, but we haven’t broken any laws, we haven’t done anything that would interest you guys,” Stapler said.
Another man stood up from one of the tables. As Lucas turned to him, he said, “I’m in Hope, and so is Jason here.” He nodded toward a man still seated, who raised his hand. “What’s going on?”
The man who’d stood up stepped over to the bar. He was wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt despite the warm day and the shirt was worn loose. When he bumped the back of a barstool, there was a distinctclank.Bob asked, “Sir, are you carrying a concealed weapon?”
The man said, “Yup, and I have a license for it.”
“Please keep your hand away from it,” Bob said.
“What is this?” Stapler demanded.
“We need to talk to you about an ongoing investigation,” Lucas told him. “It would be best if we did it in the back, you know, for privacy reasons.”
Two of the men sitting at a table to one side stood up and one said, “We’re leaving, if that’s okay.”
Rae said, “Sure,” and they left.
“You’re messing up my business,” Stapler said. He was getting red in the face.
“Let’s go talk, no reason there should be a problem,” Rae said.
“Who’s going to watch the counter?”
“You’ve got two guys here from your group, they could keep an eye on it for a few minutes,” Lucas said. “They can call you if somebody comes in.”
Stapler looked at the other two men standing by the bar, and said to the man with the gun, “Ron, could you watch it? We’ll go in the back. I’ll make it quick as I can.”
—
A LONG NARROW ROOMfull of coffee-making supplies, a desk, and file cabinets sat behind the café’s main room; Stapler ledthem through a second door into his living quarters, a two-room apartment with a couple of decrepit couches and a monster TV in the main room, with an unmade bed visible to the side. The walls held several antique guns, flintlocks and caplocks, mounted on pegs. The mounted head of a deer looked down from over the bathroom door.
Stapler didn’t sit down. He stood, with fists on his hips, facing Bob, Rae, and Lucas, and said, “So tell me.”
Lucas: “What do you know about a group called 1919?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing but what I seen on Fox. That redheaded chick talking it up.”
“You haven’t heard anything about it from your organization’s members? No speculation about who might be behind it?”
“Nope. Not a thing,” he said. “Just a minute.”
He went back to the door that led to the café, opened it, and called, “Ron? Come here a minute, will you? Jason, could you watch the counter?”
The man with the gun stepped through the door and said to Stapler, “Nobody coming in right now.” He was a bulky man, something not right about his left eye, which was watery and a bit inflamed.
Stapler nodded: “Okay. The marshals want to know if the members have heard about 1919. I told them I seen it on Fox.”
Before he could reply, Bob asked the bulky man, “What’s your last name?”
“Linstad.” To Stapler, he said, “A couple guys were talking about it last night, after that Fox show. Nobody ever heard of them before. They had pictures of kids belonging to politicians... like some kind of threat, I guess.”
Stapler said to Lucas, “That’s what I heard, too. You done some research on us, I’d guess, so you know what we’re about. You would think we would have heard something... but we haven’t heard anything.”
“How come you come to us?” Linstad asked.
“Because you’re somewhat... out there... in your politics, and you seem to like guns.”
