He thought for a moment. Wasn't impressed.
"Continue," he said.
I shrugged at him.
"So right now I'm just enjoying myself," I said. "Maybe eventually I'll find something to do, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll settle somewhere, maybe I won't. But right now, I'm not looking to."
He nodded. Jotted some more notes.
"When did you leave the army?" he asked.
"Six months ago," I said. "April."
"Have you worked at all since then?" he asked.
"You're joking," I said. "When was the last time you looked for work?"
"April," he mimicked. "Six months ago. I got this job."
"Well, good for you, Finlay," I said.
I couldn't think of anything else to say. Finlay gazed at me for a moment.
"What have you been living on?" he asked. "What rank did you hold?"
"Major," I said. "They give you severance pay when they kick you out. Still got most of it. Trying to make it last, you know?"
A long silence. Finlay drummed a rhythm with the wrong end of his pen.
"SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS," he said.
I sighed. Now I was heading for trouble.
"I came up on the Greyhound bus," I said. "Got off at the county road. Eight o'clock this morning. Walked down into town, reached that diner, ordered breakfast and I was eating it when your guys came by and hauled me in."
"You got business here?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"I'm out of work," I said. "I haven't got any business anywhere."
He wrote that down.
"Where did you get on the bus?" he asked me.
"In Tampa," I said. "Left at midnight last night."
"Tampa in Florida?" he asked.
I nodded. He rattled open another drawer. Pulled out a Greyhound schedule. Riffed it open and ran a long brown finger down a page. This was a very thorough guy. He looked across at me.
"That's an express bus," he said. "Runs straight through north to Atlanta. Arrives there nine o'clock in the morning. Doesn't stop here at eight."
I shook my head.
"I asked the driver to stop," I said. "He said he shouldn't, but he did. Stopped specially, let me off."
"You been around here before?" he asked.
I shook my head again.
"Got family down here?" he asked.
"Not down here," I said.
"You got family anywhere?" he asked.
"A brother up in D.C.," I said. "Works for the Treasury Department."
"You got friends down here in Georgia?" he asked.
"No," I said.
Finlay wrote it all down. Then there was a long silence. I knew for sure what the next question was going to be.
"So why?" he asked. "Why get off the bus at an unscheduled stop and walk fourteen miles in the rain to a place you had absolutely no reason to go to?"
That was the killer question. Finlay had picked it out right away. So would a prosecutor. And I had no real answer.
"What can I tell you?" I said. "It was an arbitrary decision. I was restless. I have to be somewhere, right?"
"But why here?" he said.
"I don't know," I said. "Guy next to me had a map, and I picked this place out. I wanted to get off the main drags. Thought I could loop back down toward the Gulf, farther west, maybe."
"You picked this place out?" Finlay said. "Don't give me that shit. How could you pick this place out? It's just a name. It's just a dot on the map. You must have had a reason."
I nodded.
"I thought I'd come and look for Blind Blake," I said.
"Who the hell is Blind Blake?" he said.
I watched him evaluating scenarios like a chess computer evaluates moves. Was Blind Blake my friend, my enemy, my accomplice, conspirator, mentor, creditor, debtor, my next victim?
"Blind Blake was a guitar player," I said. "Died sixty years ago, maybe murdered. My brother bought a record, sleeve note said it happened in Margrave. He wrote me about it. Said he was through here a couple of times in the spring, some kind of business. I thought I'd come down and check the story out."
Finlay looked blank. It must have sounded pretty thin to him. It would have sounded pretty thin to me too, in his position.
"You came here looking for a guitar player?" he said.
"A guitar player who died sixty years ago? Why? Are you a guitar player?"
"No," I said.
"How did your brother write you?" he asked. "When you got no address?"
"He wrote my old unit," I said. "They forward my mail to my bank, where I put my severance pay. They send it on when I wire them for cash."
He shook his head. Made a note.
"The midnight Greyhound out of Tampa, right?" he said.
I nodded.
"Got your bus ticket?" he asked.
"In the property bag, I guess," I said. I remembered Baker bagging up all my pocket junk. Stevenson tagging it.
"Would the bus driver remember?" Finlay said.
"Maybe," I said. "It was a special stop. I had to ask him."
I became like a spectator. The situation became abstract. My job had been not that different from Finlay's. I had an odd feeling of conferring with him about somebody else's case. Like we were colleagues discussing a knotty problem.
"Why aren't you working?" Finlay asked.
I shrugged. Tried to explain.
"Because I don't want to work," I said. "I worked thirteen years, got me nowhere. I feel like I tried it their way, and to hell with them. Now I'm going to try it my way."