The Devils Teardrop

appeared on the screen.
    In two minutes they were all highlighted. Parker saw that his concern had been unfounded. There were only four subscribers within a quarter-mile radius of the convenience store and the demolition site.
    Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the addresses. “Concentrate on those four. We’ll meet you at the convenience store. That’ll be our new staging area.”
    “Roger. Out.”
    “Let’s go,” Lukas called to the driver of the MCP, a young agent.
    “Wait,” Geller called. “Go through the vacant lot there.” He tapped the screen. “On foot. You’ll get there faster than in cars. We’ll drive over and meet you.”
    Hardy pulled his jacket on. But Lukas shook her head. “Sorry, Len. . . . What we talked about before? I want you to stay in the MCP.”
    The young officer lifted his hands, looked at Cage and Parker. “I want to do something .”
    “Len, this could be a tactical situation. We need negotiators and shooters.”
    “ He’s not a shooter,” Hardy said, nodding at Parker.
    “He’s forensic. He’ll be on the crime scene team.”
    “So I’m just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs. Is that it?”
    “I’m sorry. That’s the way it’s got to be.”
    “Whatever.” Pulled his jacket off and sat down.
    “Thank you,” Lukas said. “C. P., you stay here too. Keep an eye on the fort.”
    Meaning, Parker guessed, make sure Hardy doesn’tdo anything stupid. The big agent got the message and nodded.
    Lukas pushed open the door of the camper. Cage stepped outside. Parker pulled on his bomber jacket and followed the agent. As he climbed outside Lukas started to ask, “You have—?”
    “It’s in my pocket,” he answered shortly, slapping the pistol to make sure, and caught up with Cage, who was moving through the smoky vacant lot at a slow trot.
    * * *
    Henry Czisman took a tiny sip of his beer.
    He was certainly no stranger to liquor but he wanted at this particular moment to be as sober as possible. But a man in a bar in Gravesend on New Year’s Eve had better be drinking or else incur the suspicion of everybody in the place.
    The big man had nursed the Budweiser for a half hour.
    Joe Higgins’ was the name of the bar, Czisman noted. According to my training as a journalist, Czisman thought with irritation, this is wrong. Only plural nouns take just the s apostrophe to form the possessive. The name of the place should be Joe Higgins’s.
    Another sip of beer.
    The door opened and Czisman saw several agents walk inside. He’d been expecting someone to come in here for the canvass and he’d been very concerned that it might be Lukas or Cage or that consultant, who would recognize him and wonder why he was dogging them. But these men he’d never seen before.
    The wiry old man beside Czisman continued. “So then I go, ‘The block’s cracked. What’m I gonna do with a cracked block? Tell me what am I gonna do?’ And he ain’ have noanswer for that. Gee willikers. The fuck he think I was gonna do, not see it?”
    Czisman glanced at the scrawny guy, who was wearing torn gray pants and a dark T-shirt. December 31 and he didn’t have a coat. Did he live nearby? Upstairs. The man was drinking whiskey that smelled like antifreeze.
    “No answer, hm?” Czisman asked, eyes on the agents, studying them.
    “No. And I tell him I’ma fuck him up he don’t gimme a new block. You know?”
    He’d bought the black guy a drink because it would look less suspicious to see a black guy and a white guy with their heads down over a beer and a slimy whiskey in a bar like Joe Higgins’, with or without the correct possessive case, rather than just a white guy by himself.
    And when you buy somebody a drink you have to let them talk to you.
    The agents were showing a piece of paper—probably the picture of the Digger’s dead accomplice—to a table of three local crones, painted like Harlem whores.
    Czisman looked past them to the Winnebago parked across the street. Czisman had been staking out FBI headquarters on Ninth Street when he’d seen the three agents hurry outside, along with a dozen others. Well, they wouldn’t let him go for a ride-along—so he’d arranged for his own. Thank God there’d been a motorcade of ten or so cars and he’d just followed them—through the red lights, driving fast, flashing his brights, which is what you’re supposed to do as a cop when you’re in pursuit but don’t have a dashboard flasher. They’d parked in a cluster near