Silent Prey

white guy?
    “Did you go after Cornell?” asked Lily.
    “Yeah. Couldn’t find him. So I went and talked to Jackson.”
    “What he say?”
    “He said right after he talked to me, that same day, he saw Cornell at this playground on 118th—this is all in my report . . . .”
    “Go ahead,” Lily said.
    “Cornell came down to a playground on 118th and said he was going home. Getting out of town. Nobody knew where he went. His last name is Reed. Cornell Reed. He’s got a sheet. He’s a doper, into crack. But he used to be some kind of college kid. Not a regular asshole.”
    “How old is he?” Lily asked.
    “Middle twenties, like that.”
    “New York guy?”
    “No. Supposedly he came from down south somewhere, Atlanta maybe. Been here a few years, though—Jackson said he didn’t talk about where he came from. There was something . . . wrong. He just wouldn’t talk about it. Used to cry about it, though, when he was drunk.”
    “How many times was he busted?”
    “Half-dozen, nothing big. Theft, shoplifting, minor possession. We looked for background on him, NCIC, but there’s nothing—his first busts were here in New York, addresses up in Harlem.”
    “And he’s gone.”
    “Nowhere to be found. We checked Atlanta, but they don’t know him.”
    “Dead?”
    Rich frowned. “Don’t think so. When he took off from the playground, he had some new shoes and a big nylon suitcase. That’s what the guys at the playground say. He came up to 118th to say good-bye, they were sitting around. Then he jumped a cab and that’s the last they saw of him.”
    “You wrote a report on all of this?”
    “Yeah. And we’re still looking for him. To tell you the truth, he’s about the only thing we ever got on the case.”
    “What were you doing for Petty?” Lucas asked.
    “Just looking at guys, mostly,” Rich said. “Made me a little nervous, tell you the truth. I tried to get off it. I don’t like looking at our own people.”
    “How’d you get assigned to the case?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t know. Someone downtown, I guess,” Richsaid, his forehead wrinkling as he thought about it. “My lieutenant just said to report down to City Hall for a special assignment. He didn’t know what was going on either.”
    “All right,” said Lucas. Then, “How did Cornell know the white guy was old?”
    “Don’t know; if I find him, I’ll ask him. Maybe just because he knows him from somewhere . . .”
    They talked for another half hour, but Rich had almost nothing that wasn’t in the reports. Lily thanked him and let him go.
    “Waste of time,” Lily said to Lucas.
    “Had to try. What do you know about him? Rich?”
    “Not much, really,” she said.
    “Good detective?”
    “He’s okay. Competent. Nothing spectacular.”
    “Hmp.” Lucas touched the sore cheek, head down, considering.
    “Why?”
    “Just wondering,” he said, looking back up. “You ready to go?”
    “Want to walk? Down to the restaurant?”
    “How far?” Lucas asked.
    “Ten, fifteen minutes, taking it easy.”
    “Are we gonna get shot, going out the door?”
    “No. O’Dell had a couple of people talk to the supers all along the block,” Lily said. “They’re looking for strange people wandering around their apartments.”
    The street outside the apartment was clear, but before they went out through the lobby door, Lucas scanned the windows across the street.
    “Nervous?”
    “No. I’m trying to figure it,” he said.
    She studied his face. “What?”
    “Nothing.” He shook his head. Rich had seemed straight enough.
    “C’mon . . .”
    “Nothing, really . . .”
    “All right,” Lily said, annoyed, still watching him.
     
    The Village was pretty, quiet, well-tended brick townhouses with flowers in window boxes, touches of wrought iron, the image wounded here and there by a curl of concertina, a touch of razor wire. And the people looked different, Lucas thought, from the people farther uptown; a deliberate touch of the Bohemian: sandals and canvas shorts, beards and waist-length hair, old-fashioned bikes and wooden necklaces.
    The Manhattan Caballero was buried in a street of red stone buildings, a small place, its name and logo painted on one window, a beer sign in the other.
    “They shot from up there, the third window in, second floor,” Lily said, standing on the sidewalk outside the Caballero door, pointing across the street.
    “Couldn’t miss with a laser sight,” Lucas said, looking