The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay Page B

might be pushing things.
    Shotgun shook his head. “That wouldn’t work for me. I get seasick.”
    I could think of other problems that might interfere with Brother Nehemiah’s navy career as well, but I didn’t want to go there.
    We turned to leave.
    “John D,” Nehemiah said, “how come you ain’t never joined us for a service? We must’ve invited you a dozen times. It’s where the Real Word is being spoken.”
    “You mean to tell me the rest of those words I’ve been hearing my whole life ain’t even been real?” John D’s eyes twinkled.
    “Yes sir, that’s right.” Nehemiah’s voice grew fervent. Apparently, irony is no match for a brain washed clean by the Real Word.
    John D smiled. “Well, Brother Nehemiah, you are a man of conviction. I respect that.” Nehemiah preened a little at that.
    “You take care now,” Nehemiah said. He strolled back to the fence and walked off whistling.
    John D looked over at me and grinned. “What do you think, son?”
    “I’m impressed,” I said. “Where did you learn to fib like that?”
    “I used to be in law enforcement, just like you,” he said.
    Which explained his quick draw.
    “I worked for the Sheriff’s department for a few years when I was just out of high school. Till I was old enough to take over for my daddy.” John D waved his arms at the dead and dying trees around us. “Good thing Nehemiah there don’t know squat about almonds. He woulda realized nobody’s gonna grow nothing on these trees.” The lines in his face deepened as he surveyed the ghostly grove. “Well, I’d best be off.”
    “Want a lift back to your place?”
    “I wouldn’t say no,” he said. “My knee’s tore up something awful.”
    We got in my car and lurched our way back to the gravel. He directed me onto a second dirt road, just off to the left.
    “Let me ask you something,” I said as we bumped up the drive. “What kind of interactions have you had with the Children of Paradise?”
    “They never give me trouble,” John D replied. “’Bout the only time I see them is when I’m out walking my land. They’ll be down there singing or doing some ritual or other. I wave to them. They wave back. End of story.”
    “Have they been your neighbors long?”
    “They moved in maybe a dozen years ago. This other guy was their leader then—don’t recollect his name either—but he died a few years back. The new guy, I’ve just met him the one time, when they were having problems with the hog farm.”
    “They were stealing power, right?” I said.
    “Yeah, but they’ve always got some kind of fight going with the hog farmers. The Children of Paradise don’t eat meat, and when the wind blows the wrong direction, they get a face full of hog stink.” John D punched my arm lightly. “Hey, I’m not exactly a fan myself. When the wind blows southeast, I smell it all the way over here. Some L.A. outfit owns it, prolly the Mob, and like most business owners, they don’t have to deal directly with the stench they create.”
    The Mob again.
    He caught my look. “Don’t you know a lot of the big pig farms are owned by the Mafia?”
    What I didn’t know about the Mob was clearly a trough-load. “Tell me more.”
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. “The Eye-talians got into garbage collection a hundred years back. Nobody else wanted to haul waste. They saw the need, so they took it over. If you’re in the garbage-hauling business, why not pig farming, too? One hand feeds the other, you know? Pretty dang smart, you ask me.”
    I didn’t know whether this was true or just the ramblings of an old man’s imagination.
    An image flickered through my mind: Ostrich loafers mincing up a dirt road with a basket of gourmet goodies, and a contract that stunk as bad as this hog farm apparently did.
    I tucked the vision away for future reference. The correlation seemed far-fetched, but at this stage I was still just gathering dots—I’d start connecting them later.
    The dirt road