I was impressed. I looked at him a little harder.
Braun smiled. “I washed since then.”
“Point is,” Ed cut in, “Stompers got down with Aryan Nations. Must of caught it in jail. So Detective Braun got to go to the convention.”
“The what?”
Braun nodded. “All the right-wing God-and-gun nuts get together every year. They swap guns and knives and books and pictures of Hitler. You get to see who’s coming up and what ideas are going around.”
“This guy called me Zog. Then he said I was a mud-boy.”
Braun nodded. “Aren’t we all. Zog is Z-O-G. Stands for Zionist Occupation Government. Means a fed, or a cop. They believe America—and the world—has been stolen away by the Jews and their puppets.”
Ed couldn’t let that go. “’Scuse me, boss, but could I borrow Montana?”
Braun ignored the interruption. So did I. “And mud-boy?”
He smiled. “That’s a little nastier. Anybody who isn’t one hundred percent pure Aryan has tainted blood. They’re mud-people, not really humans.”
“What about that keychain, Billy?” Ed asked me.
I nodded. “He had a sword on his keychain. It had an inscription.” I closed my eyes and pictured the sword. I’ve always had a good visual memory, and in a moment I could see it. “Is thusa mo thua chatha,” I said.
Braun whistled. Now he looked impressed. “This guy keeps fast company,” he said to Ed.
He turned back to me. “‘You will be my battle ax,’” he said. “It’s Gaelic, it’s the motto of the Brothers of the Righteous Sword.”
“Oh, my,” said Ed.
“Can I take it that the Brothers are not a fencing club?”
“And they ain’t brothers, neither,” Ed tossed in with a cackle. Braun turned his one good eye on me. I could see why the Stompers let him hang around. It was like looking into a cold dark well.
“Die Bruders are an elite group of shock troopers. They call themselves Aryan Warriors. They’ve taken all these oaths to God about death before dishonor, defending the white race to the last drop of their pure white blood, and so on.”
“The usual shit,” I said.
“Nope,” Braun told me. “So far, these guys mean it. We never took one alive. And they always take down a couple of ZOGs when they go.”
“So how does Moss go from CSA to the Bruders?”
Braun smiled. He had a gold tooth in the front with a small diamond set into it. “There’s only so many of these guys to go around. The feds bust one bunch, the leaders go to jail, and the troopers need to find a new outfit.” He shrugged. “I’d bet most of the soldiers in Die Bruders were in two or three other groups before this one. It’s what they do. They’re professional racists.”
“My, my,” said Ed. “What you into now, Billy boy?”
“I don’t know. I’m just a mud-boy. What would this guy be doing hanging around that neighborhood?”
“These are not the kind of guys that go for a walk in the park,” said Braun. “If he was there, it was for a reason.”
“Bingo,” said Ed.
I shook my head. “We still don’t know what that reason is. Okay, he’s a member of a racist group—”
“A racist paramilitary group,” Ed butted in. “Which ought to make you feel better ’bout him cleaning out your ear. Man’s had some training.”
Braun stood up. “One last tip on these guys,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked him.