Shadow Prey

man. They’re just waiting. I got nothing against you, so you’d be safe. You want me out, you come up here.”
    Lucas looked at the negotiator. “What do you think?”
    “He killed the guy in New York,” the negotiator said. “He tried to kill the FBI team.”
    “He had a reason. Maybe he really wants the protection.”
    “He’s scared,” the negotiator agreed.
    “What are you going to do?” Hood asked.
    “Hold on a minute, we’re talking,” Lucas said. He looked at Lily. “There might not be any other way to take him alive.”
    “You’d be nuts to go in there,” Lily objected. “We’ve got him. Sooner or later he’s got to come out and nobody has to get hurt. Nobody out here . . .”
    “We need to talk to him.”
    “I don’t need to talk to him,” she said. “I just need him any way we can get him. Dead or alive.”
    “You don’t care if we get the rest of the group?” Lucas asked.
    “Sure. Theoretically. But Hood’s my man. After he’s taken care of, the rest is up to you and the feebs.”
    Kieffer had been standing back from the car, looking down the street at the apartment. “It’d take some balls to go in there,” he said.
    His tone was ambiguous, as if he weren’t sure that Lucas would do it.
    “Hey, we aren’t talking balls here,” the negotiator said, anger in his voice.
    “Yeah, what the fuck did that crack mean, Kieffer?” Lily asked, turning to Kieffer with her hands on her hips.
    “Take it easy,” Lucas said, waving them off. He didn’t look at Kieffer but stared past the negotiator at the apartment window. With the glass broken out, it was a black square in the red stone. “I’ll give it a try.”
    “God damn it, Davenport, you’re crazy,” Lily said. But then she said, “Talk to him through the window. Don’t go inside, just talk over the ledge.”
    Lucas got back on the phone. “Billy? I’m ready, man.”
    “Well, come on.”
    “You’re not bullshitting me?”
    “I’m not, I just don’t want one of them white boys to snipe me, man.”
    “They see him from across the street. They got a gun on him. He’s halfway up into the room,” the radio man said quietly, as he listened on his headset. “Del says that when you get up there, if he tries anything, you drop below the window; we’ll hose him down.”
    “Okay.” Lucas glanced at Lily, nodded and said into the phone, “I’m stepping out, Billy. I’m down the street, way to your right as you look out the window.”
    “Come on, man. This is getting old.”
    Lucas stepped out from behind the car, his hands held wide and open at shoulder height.
    “Okay, man,” he yelled at the window.
    He walked slowly down the street, his hands wide, conscious of two dozen sets of eyes following him. The day was cool, but he could feel sweat starting on his back. A line of blue-and-white pigeons watched from a red-tiled roof down the street. On another roof, beside a chimney and outof Hood’s line of sight, an ERU officer was lined up on the window with an M-16. A police radio poked unintelligible sentences into the morning air. Lucas was thirty feet out.
    “Come on, man, you’re okay,” Hood called from the window. Lucas moved closer, his hands still away from his side. When he was five feet from the window, Hood called again. “Come straight on in. I’ll be off to the left. I don’t want to see no gun pointing at me, man. I’m really tight, you know?”
    Lucas reached out, touched the outer wall of the building and eased up to the window. Looking in at a sharp angle, he could see nothing but a broken-down chair. He moved a little farther into the window opening. There was nobody in his line of sight. The red beanbag was squashed in the middle of the floor, with a dent in it, as though somebody had been thrown on top of it.
    “I’m giving up, man,” Hood said. His voice came from off to the right, but Lucas still couldn’t see him. He took another step.
    “I want you inside,” Hood said.
    “I can’t do that, Billy,” Lucas said.
    “You’re just setting me up, man. You’re just making me a target. If I come to that window, I’m a dead man, aren’t I?”
    “I swear to God, Billy . . . .”
    “You don’t have to swear to God. Just get up in that window. I’ll be there. I want you to go out right in front of me, man, so those white boys don’t snipe me.”
    Lucas looked around once, muttered “Fuck it” under his breath, put his hands on the window ledge and boosted