Hidden Prey

stocky, both in their late twenties or early thirties, both Spivaks, Lucas assumed. One of them said, “Ma, what’s wrong. Ma? Is he okay?”
    “He’s okay,” she sniffed. “The police say it’s a murder investigation . . .” and she cracked again and wandered over to a chair and sat down. The young woman said, “John, what the heck is going on here?”
    “Carol, you just go take care of your mom. We need to talk to your dad for a minute. We don’t know exactly what happened yet, but we’re working on it.”
    “Did you catch anybody?”
    “Not yet. That’s what we’re working on. You go sit down and we’ll talk to your dad for a minute and then you can come in.”
     
    S PIVAK WAS PROPPED up in a hospital bed, covered to the waist with a sheet, his neck wrapped in gauze, more gauze taped to the left side of his face, another blob stuck on his earlobe. When they walked in, he looked at Lucas and croaked, “What the hell?”
    Lucas asked, “Did you recognize the guy?”
    “No. Never saw him before.” The words came out in spurts, as though each one hurt. “Tall guy. Black hair. Black eyes. Skinny. Big nose. Maybe forty. Black raincoat. Gloves. Waited in bar. Everybody gone. Asked him to leave. Pulled a gun. Made me tie rope up. Made me stand on beer bottles. Hung me. Had radio. Kicked out beer bottles when he heard cops was coming. Ran out back.”
    “American? Foreign?”
    “American. I think. No accent. Shot me in ear.”
    “In the ear?” Andreno asked. “I saw blood, didn’t hear no shot.”
    “Silencer. When I wouldn’t stand on bottles. Shot my earlobe off. Bullet one inch from eye. Scared shit out of me.”
    “What did he want?” Lucas asked.
    “Same as you. Wanted to know, who was in room.”
    “What’d you tell him?”
    “Same as you. Don’t know.”
    “You didn’t know a single one of them?”
    “No. Told you.”
    They went on for a while, but Spivak knew nothin’ about nothin’.
    Finally, Lucas said, “I’ll tell you, Mr. Spivak, you’re bullshitting us. There are already two people dead and you were almost a third. This guy is nuts, and he could come back if we don’t catch him.”
    Spivak’s eyes flicked away, and without looking back at Lucas, he shook his head.
     
    T HEY SPENT FIVE minutes with the family, but the family claimed they knew nothing about any meeting at the bar, and pushed the cops off and disappeared into Spivak’s room.
    The chief said, “This is really screwed up.”
    Lucas asked, “How well do you know Spivak?”
    He shrugged: “Well—I think he moved here from somewhere else when he was a kid, so I’ve only known him since kindergarten. That’s what, fifty-four years?”
    “He’s a good guy?” asked Andreno.
    Terry nodded: “Yeah, he’s okay. He’s just a guy. He runs a bar. He can be an asshole, sometimes. Most of the time, he’s okay.”
    “Goddamnit. The problem is, there’s something going on with this spy shit, and I don’t know what it is,” Lucas said. “Spivak isn’t talking, and he knows some shit . . .”
    Terry nodded in agreement. “I saw him look away. I’ll tell you what, maybe you scared him. I’ll go in and bullshit with him when you’re gone. Tomorrow morning, see what he has to say. We’ve known each other a long time.”
    “I’d keep an eye on him,” Lucas said. “This guy out there, whoever he is—he’s not fuckin’ around.”
    “I’ll get them to put him down in intensive care. That way, he’ll be behind the nurses’ station and there’ll always be somebody right there. I’ll have guys stop by, and we got an extra car, I’ll park it out front.”
    “Good. Talk to him, then. Call me.”
    “Get this guy some ID,” Terry said, tapping Andreno on the chest. “And tell him to watch his mouth. He wise-assed us so much some of the guys wanted to shoot him to stop the bullshit.”
    Andreno said, “You guys . . .” But Lucas waved him off.
    “I gotta ask you a favor,” Lucas said to Terry. “I’d like to put outa story—your newspaper, the TV, however—that you got a call from a passerby about something weird happening at Spivak’s. Maybe somebody heard a scream. When you sent a car, you missed the bad guy, but a cop or a passerby saw Spivak hanging there and cut him down. Just have somebody else do what Micky did. Tell your guys to keep their mouths shut—tell the family that. I want to keep Micky a little secret.”
    “Gonna be tough. This is a small town,”