yancey was always on the alert whenever a stranger came into the store.
even though he told himself that the past was the past and that he should move on, his first thought when a stranger walked in was that the stranger could be
a) kingfish or
b) detective bud rogers, who had worked so hard to convict him of yolanda’s murder. yancey had a good memory of what bud rogers looked like, from the time in court
of kingfish, he did not have so clear a memory.
if a woman came in who was a stranger, he wondered if she might be detectve lila livingston, who had arrested him, and assisted bud rogers to convict him.
the man who came in on this particular night was much taller and leaner than bud rogers. might he be kingfish? at firsr glance, he looked a little too old.
the man took a can of dr pepper out of the drink cabinet and a bag of extra spicy corn chips off the chip rack and came over to the counter.
he gave no sign of recognizing yancey, he did take notice of the little statue of the soldier.
you collect these? he asked yancey.
yancey had been asked that a few times before. no, he said, i just happened to pick this one up.
mind if i look at it? the stranger asked. can i touch it, pick it up?
go right ahead.
the man picked the little soldier up and examined it.
pretty accurate, he announced. very accurate, as a matter of fact. the uniform of a grenadier in burkstein’s mercenary army, in the third imperial war.
wow, yancey exclaimed softly. you must know a lot, if you know that.
everybody knows something, the stranger replied. he put the little soldier back down on the counter.
yancey rang up the dr pepper and the chips, and the man left.
yancey noticed that william had left also.
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