Impact

52

Harry Burr sat in a Greek diner opposite McGolrick Park with a cheeseburger, coffee, and the Post, watching the rain run down the plate glass window in ever-changing rivulets. There were mathematical rules in the rivulets, rules that described chaos. It was sort of like the rules that described a hit. Controlled chaos. Because you could never anticipate everything. There was always a surprise: like dear old mother being in the house after Corso told him he was alone. Or being forced to kill Corso.

Always a little surprise.

He refocused his eyes farther away and had a clear view across the corner of McGolrick Park to the row house where he'd done Corso and his mother. The geek had been about to tell him where the drive was, he was pissing his pants with eagerness to tell him--and then the old lady walks in.

He nursed the strong coffee, leafed through the Post, and watched the show. He hadn't found the hard drive but he knew the bar where Corso worked and he knew his ex-roommate's address. The hard drive would be at the bar or the friend's place. He'd check out the bar first. If Corso were really smart he might have mailed it back to himself or even stuck it in a safe-deposit box. But he was pretty sure he'd have kept it close by.

He took another sip of coffee, turned the pages of the paper, pretending to read. It had been slow in the restaurant and now it was empty, most of the customers having finished up quickly and gone into the park to check out the show. He kept an eye on the crowd, looking for anyone who might be a relative, a friend--a girlfriend--to whom Corso might also have given the drive.

Two people in the park began attracting his attention, a black girl and a tall, craggy man. They seemed just a little too alert, a little too detached from the rest, to be neighborhood rubberneckers. They were watching, observing. They were involved.

He marked them in his memory in case he saw them again.