Silken Prey

ladies, and we don’t get many old ladies in here.”
    “Is he in here pretty regular?” Del asked.
    “Yeah, most days.”
    Lucas tipped his head toward the people in the booths: “Any of these people know him?”
    The bartender looked past him, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so. I don’t pay that much attention to who sits with who. We got a waitress comes in later this afternoon, she’d know better than me.”
    “But you think he comes from around here.”
    “Yeah, unless he takes a bus. I seen him coming from the direction of the bus stop.”
    Del looked at Lucas and shook his head. Not that many people would take a bus to a dive like Smackie’s. It wouldn’t be worth the money, since almost any other place would be better.
    Del said, “We’ll check back,” and he and Lucas started for the door. They were almost there when the bartender called, “Hey, guys. C’mere.”
    They walked back to the bar and the bartender flicked a finger at the window on the left side of the bar. The glass was dark green and dirty, not easily seen through, but they could see a very short man walking down a street toward the bar. The bartender said, “You owe me.”
    Del: “That’s him?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    •   •   •
    T HEY WATCHED THE SHORT MAN until he crossed the street and started toward the bar entrance. Lucas looked around and said, “Better take him outside,” and Del said, “Yeah,” and they went to the door, waited for a few seconds, then pushed through into the daylight. Clay was only fifteen feet away. He saw Lucas, and quick as a rat, turned and started running.
    His feet were churning like a machine, Lucas noticed as he took off after the other man, but his legs were so short that he was only making about two feet per churn; Lucas caught him in a hundred feet. He didn’t want to make the mistake of having a knife or gun pulled on him, so when he was close behind, and Clay turned to look at him, he hit Clay on the back of the neck and sent him sprawling, hands first, into the street.
    Clay rolled over and looked up the muzzle of Del’s pistol. “How you doin’, James,” Del said. “You’re under arrest for murder.”
    “They’re lying to you,” Clay said. He was very short, maybe five-two, and thin.
    “Who’s lying to us?” Lucas asked.
    “The Chicago cops. I had not a single fuckin’ thing to do with any of that.”
    “Tell the Chicago cops that,” Lucas said. “Roll over on your face, keep your arms out . . . you know the routine.”
    Lucas patted him down, took a short folding knife out of Clay’s back pocket, handed it to Del. Del cuffed him, and they stood him up and Lucas held on to the cuff link while Del gave him a more thorough pat-down.
    A young white kid, maybe ten, rode up on a fenderless half-sized bicycle, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He stopped and asked, “You guys cops?”
    “Yes,” Del said. “You go on home, son.”
    “Blow me,” the kid said, and rode away.
    “That’s righteous, that’s righteous,” Clay shouted after the kid, who gave him the finger.
    “I guess he doesn’t like any of us,” Del said.
    They put Clay up against Lucas’s Lexus, and Lucas called Cochran. Cochran came up and Lucas said, “We got Clay for you.”
    “What? How’d you do that?”
    “By accident, mostly.” He explained about Smackie’s.
    Cochran said, “All right. I’ll come down there myself and pick him up.”
    “Good. Because I hate to write reports,” Lucas said. “He’s your guy.”
    •   •   •
    L UCAS HAD BEEN BOTHERED by Clay’s reaction to the arrest. He told him, “You stand right there. If I’ve got to chase you down again, it won’t be any patty-cake slap on the neck like last time. You understand that?”
    Clay said, “Hey, man, you gotta listen to this. I never—”
    “Shut up,” Lucas said.
    He and Del moved off ten steps, and Lucas said, “If he killed Roman . . .”
    “I know,” Del said. “He’s been around. If he killed her, it should have been nothing but, ‘I wanna lawyer.’”
    “Maybe he’s stupid,” Lucas said, glancing at Clay.
    “He
is
stupid, but not
that
stupid,” Del said. “Doesn’t take that much firepower to remember ‘I wanna lawyer.’”
    “Yeah.” Lucas scratched his chin. “I’d like to ask him something . . . see his reaction.”
    “You give away too much, you’re going to piss off Turk.”
    “Little rain falls in everybody’s life,”