Shadow Prey

around the dumpster.
    “Larry,” he said. Hart jumped and spun around.
    “Jesus,” he said, his face stricken. “Shadow.”
    “It’s been a long time,” Shadow Love said. “I think I saw you a time or two out on Lake Street, after you graduated.”
    “Yeah, long time,” Hart said. He tried to smile. “Are you still living around here?”
    Shadow Love ignored the question. “I heard in the bars that you’ve been looking for me,” he said, stepping closer. Hart was bigger than he was, but Shadow Love knew that Hart would be no contest in a fight. Hart knew it too.
    “Yeah, yeah. The cops have. They want to talk to you about your fathers.”
    “My fathers? The Crows?”
    “Yeah. Some people think they might, you know . . .” Hart bobbed his head uncomfortably.
    “ . . . have a connection with these killings?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that,” Shadow Love said. He was standing on the sides of his feet, the fingers of both his hands in his jeans pockets. “Are you a cop now, Larry?”
    “No, no, I still work for the Welfare.”
    “You’re sure talking like a cop, out on the street,” Shadow Love said, pressing.
    “Well, I know,” Hart said. “I don’t like it either. I got my clients, but the cops won’t leave me alone, you know? They don’t have anybody else who knows the people.”
    “Mmmm.” Shadow Love looked down at the toes of his cowboy boots, then up at the sky. It had been slate-gray for a day and a half, but now there was a big blue hole in the clouds right over the river. “Come on, Larry. I want to talk some more. Let’s go on down where we can see the river. Nice day.”
    “It’s cold,” Hart said. He shivered but walked along. Shadow Love stayed just a few inches behind him, his fingers still in his pockets.
    “That’s a big old hole, there,” Shadow Love said, looking at the sky.
    “They call it a sucker hole, pilots do,” Hart said, looking up at it. “I took a couple of flying lessons once. That’s what they called those things. Sucker holes.”
    “What do you think, that the Crows are behind all this?” Shadow Love asked.
    Hart had to half turn to talk to him, and he lost his footing for a moment and stumbled. Shadow Love caught his elbow and helped him regain his balance. “Thanks,” Hart said.
    “The Crows?” Shadow Love prompted. They continued walking.
    “Well, old man Andretti shipped a lot of money out here—that’s the money the cops have been spreading around town—and those were the names that came up,” Hart said. “The Crows.”
    “How about me?”
    “Well, the cops know you’re their son. They thought maybe you’d know . . .”
    “ . . . where they are? Well, yeah. I do,” Shadow Love said.
    “You do?”
    “Mmm.” They got off the blacktopped street and walked along the grassy top of the hill that ran down to the Mississippi. Shadow Love stopped and looked down the river. The black spot floated out in front of his eyes, a funnel of darkness in the day. Fuckin’ Hart, probing to find his fathers. “Love the river,” he said.
    “It’s a hell of a river,” Hart agreed. A harbor tow was pushing a single empty barge downstream toward the Ford lock and dam. The light from the sucker hole poured down on it, and from the height of the hillside, the boat and barge looked like kids’ toys, every detail standing out in high relief.
    “Look up there,” Shadow Love said. “There’s an eagle.”
    Hart looked up and saw the bird, but he thought maybe it was a hawk. He didn’t say so but stood looking at it, aware of Shadow Love beside and slightly behind him. Shadow Love slipped his hand in his pocket and felt the knife. He’d never used it before, never thought of it as a real weapon.
    “Breathe it in, Larry, the cold air. God, it feels good on your skin. Breathe it in. See the eagle circling? Look at the hillside over there, Larry. Look at the trees, you can pick them all out . . . . Breathe it in, Larry . . . .”
    Hart stood with his back to Shadow Love, his eyes half closed, taking great gulping breaths of the cold air, feelingthe tingle on his skin, on the back of his neck. He turned his head up again and said, “You know, I talked . . .”
    He was going to tell Shadow Love that he’d called the Crows from the police station, to tell them about the coming raid. But he couldn’t do that. It would sound as though he were trying to ingratiate himself, as if he were crawling.