Silent Prey

CHAPTER
22

Lucas called Darius Pike in Charleston and gave him the plane's arrival time, then met Sloan and Del downtown. They hit a sports bar, talking, remembering. Lucas was long out of the departmental gossip-who was kissing whose ass, who was shagging who. Sloan went home at one o'clock and Lucas and Del wound up in an all-night diner on West Seventh in St. Paul.

"… shit, I said, gettin' married was okay," Del said. "But then she started talking about a kid. She's, like, forty."

"Ain't the end of the world," Lucas said.

"Do I look like Life with Father? " Del asked. He spread his arms: he was wearing a jeans jacket with a black sleeveless tank top. An orange and black insignia on the sleeve of the jacket said, " Harley-Davidson-Live to Ride, Ride to Live." He had a five-day beard, but his eyes were as relaxed and clear as Lucas had ever seen them.

"You're looking pretty good, actually," Lucas said. "A year ago, man, you were ready for the junk heap."

"Yeah, yeah…"

"So why not have a kid?"

"Jesus." Del looked out the window. "I kinda been asking myself that."

Del peeled off at three o'clock and Lucas went home, opened all the windows in the house, and began writing checks to cover the bills that had arrived with the mail. At five, finished with the bills, and tired, he closed and locked all the windows, went back to the bedroom and repacked his overnight bag. He called a cab, had the driver stop at a SuperAmerica all-night store, bought two jelly doughnuts and a cup of coffee, and rode out to the airport.

The plane taxied away from the terminal at six-thirty. The stewardess asked if he wanted juice and eggs.

"I'm gonna try to go to sleep," he said. "Please, please don't wake me up…"

The fear got him as the takeoff run began, the sense of helplessness, the lack of control. He closed his eyes, fists clenched. Got off the ground with body English. Held his breath until the engine noise changed and the climb rate slowed. Cranked back the seat. Tried to sleep. A while later, he didn't know how long, he realized that his mouth tasted like chicken feathers, and his neck hurt. The stewardess was shaking his shoulder: "Could you bring your seat upright, please?"

He opened his eyes, disoriented. "I was sleeping," he groaned.

"Yes," she said in her most neutral voice. "But we're approaching Atlanta, and your seat…"

"Atlanta?" He couldn't believe it. He never slept on airplanes. The plane's left wing dipped, and they turned on it, and, looking down, he could see the city of Atlanta, like a gritty gray rug. Ten minutes later, they were down.

The Atlanta airport was straight from RoboCop, with feminine machine voices issuing a variety of warnings just below the level of consciousness, and steel escalators dropping into sterile tile hallways. He was glad to get out, though the flight to Charleston was bad. He fought the fear and managed to compose himself by the time the plane was on the ground.

Pike was waiting inside the small terminal, a stolid black man wearing a green cotton jacket over a white shirt and khaki pants. When his jacket moved, Lucas could see a half-dozen ballpoint pens clipped to his shirt pocket and a small revolver on his belt.

"Lucas Davenport," Lucas said, shaking hands.

"I gotta car," Pike said, leading the way. "How's New York?"

"Hotter'n here," Lucas said.

"This is nothin'," Pike said. "You ought to be here in August."

"That's what they say in New York…"

They left the airport at speed. Lucas, disoriented, asked, "Where's the ocean?"

"Straight ahead, but the city's not really on the ocean. It's kind of like… Manhattan, actually," Pike said. "There's a river coming in on both sides, and they meet, and that's the harbor, and then you gotta go on out past the Fort to get into the ocean."

"Fort Sumter?"

"That's it," Pike said.

"I'd like to see it sometime. I've been going to battlefields. Tell me about Reed."

Pike whipped past a gray Maxima, took an off-ramp, then turned left at the bottom. The street was cracked, the borders overgrown with weeds and scrub. "Reed is a stupid motherfucker," he said matter-of-factly. "I get mad talking about it. His old man has lived here all his life, runs a garage and gas station, does the best body work in town, and makes a ton of money. And Red did good in high school. Did good on his tests and got into Columbia University on a scholarship. The silly fuck goes up to New York and starts putting junk up his nose, the cocaine. Hanging out in Harlem, coming back here and talking shit. Then he didn't come back anymore. The word was, he was putting it up his nose full-time."

"Huh. How long's he been back?"

"Few weeks," Pike said. "I feel bad for his folks."

"Is he staying?"

"I don't know. When he first got back, there were a couple of rumbles from Narcotics that he was hanging out with the wrong people. But I haven't heard that lately. Maybe something changed."

Lucas hadn't thought about what Charleston might look like, but as they drove through, he decided it was just right: Old South. Clapboard houses with peeling paint, and weird trees; bushes with plants that had leaves like leather, and spikes. A few palms. A lot of dirt. Hot.

The Reed garage was a gray concrete-block building sitting side by side with a Mobil gas station and convenience store. All but one set of the gas pumps had a car parked next to them, and uniformed attendants moved around cleaning windshields and checking oil. "You come in here, they wipe your windshield, check your oil, put air in your tires. The only place you'll find it," Pike said. "That's why Don Reed makes the money he does."

He killed the engine in the body shop's parking lot and Lucas followed him into the shop office. The office smelled of motor oil, but was neatly kept, with plastic customer chairs facing a round table stacked with magazines. Behind a counter, a large man was hunched over a yellow-screen computer, poking at a keyboard one finger at a time. He looked up when they came in and said, "Hey, Darius."

"Hey, Don. Is Red around?"

Reed straightened up, his smile slipping off his face. "He done somethin'?"

Pike shook his head and Lucas said, "No. I'm from New York. Your son witnessed a shooting. He was a passerby. I just need to talk to him for a couple of minutes."

"You sure?" Reed asked, a hostile tone scratching through. "I got a lawyer…"

"Look: You don't know me, so… But I'm telling you, with a witness standing here, that all I want to do is talk. There's no warrant, no anything. He's not a suspect."

Reed regarded Lucas coolly, then finally nodded. "All right, come on. He's out back."

Red Reed was coming out of a paint room when they found him, a plastic mask and hat covering his head. When he saw his father and the two cops, he pulled off the protective gear and waited uncertainly by the paint room door. He was tall, too thin, with prominent white teeth.

"Police to talk to you. One from New York," his father said. "I'm gonna listen." Red Reed looked apprehensive, but nodded.

"Can we find a place to sit?" Lucas asked.

The elder Reed nodded: "Nobody in the waiting room…"

Lucas took Bobby Rich's report from his pocket, unfolded it, and led Red Reed through it, confirming it bit by bit.

"White-haired guy," Lucas said. "Thin, fat?"

"Yeah. Skinny, like."

"Dark? Pale? What?"

"Tan. He was, like, tan."

"What was the scene like, when Fred Waites was shot?"

"Well, man, I wasn't right there. I saw the car go by and I thought I saw a gun and I headed the other way. I heard the shooting, saw the car."

"What kind of car?"

"I don't know, man, I wasn't paying attention to that," Reed said. He was looking at his hands. Pike moved impatiently, and Reed's father looked out the door but didn't say anything. Reed's eyes wandered to his father, then back to Lucas.

"What time was it?" Lucas asked.

"I didn't have a watch…"

"I mean, afternoon, evening, night?"

Reed nervously licked his lips, then seemed to pick one: "Evening."

"It was three o'clock in the afternoon, Red," Lucas said. "Bright daylight."

"Man, I was fucked up…"

"You don't know what kind of car it was, but you could see inside that the guy was white-haired, skinny and tanned? But you didn't see anything about the other guys? Red…" Lucas glanced at Don Reed. "Red, you're lying to us. This is an important case. We think the same guys shot a cop and, before that, a lawyer."

"I don't know nothing about that," Reed said, now avoiding everyone's eyes.

"Okay, I don't think you do. But you're lying to me…"

"I'm not lying," Reed said.

Don Reed turned to face his son and in a harsh, cutting voice said, "You remember what I told you? No bullshit, no lies, no dope, no stealing, and we'll try to keep you alive. And you're lying, boy. There never was a time, from when you were a little baby, that you didn't know what kind of car was what-and you see a man and know he's got white hair and a tan, and you don't know what car he was in? Horseshit. You're lying. You stop, now."

Lucas said, "I want to know how much John O'Dell had to do with it."

Reed had been staring miserably at his feet, but now his head popped up.

"You know Mr. O'Dell?"

"Aw, shit," Lucas said. He stood up, walked once around the tiny room, whacked the spherical Lions Club gum machine with the palm of his hand, then pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "You're fuckin' working for O'Dell."

"Man…" said Reed.

"O'Dell a dope pusher?" Don Reed asked, voice dark, angry.

"No," Lucas said. "He's about the fifth most important cop in New York."

The two Reeds exchanged glances, and Pike asked, "What's going on?"

"A goddamned game, pin the tail on the donkey," Lucas said. "And I'm the jackass."

He said to Reed, "So now I know. I need some detail. Where'd you meet him, how'd you get pulled in on this…"

Reed blurted it out. He'd met O'Dell at a Columbia seminar. O'Dell spoke three times, and each time, Reed talked to him after class. Harlem was different than an Irish cop could know, Reed said. The fat cop and skinny southerner argued about life on the streets; went with a few other students and the professor to a coffee shop, talked late. He saw O'Dell again, in the spring, but he was into the dope by then. Busted in a sweep of a crack house, called O'Dell. The arrest disappeared, but he was warned: never again. But there was another time. He was arrested twice more for possession, went to court. Then a third time, and this time he had a little too much crack on him. The cops were talking about charging him as a dealer, and he called O'Dell. He got simple possession, and was out again.

Then O'Dell called. Did he know anybody, a crook, with a connection to a cop? To a detective? Well, yes…

"Sonofabitch. It was too neat, it had to be," Lucas said.

"What the fuck is going on?" Pike asked again.

"I don't know, man," Lucas said. To Reed, he said, "Don't call O'Dell. You're out of this and you want to stay out. Whatever's going on here, and it's pretty rough, doesn't have anything to do with you. You'd best lay low."

"He's out," Don Reed said, looking at his son.

Reed's head bobbed. "I don't want nothing more to do with New York."

On the way back to the airport, Pike said, "I don't think I'd like New York."

"It's got some low points," Lucas said. He took a card from his pocket diary, scribbled his home phone number on the back of it. "Listen, thanks for the help. If you ever need anything from New York or Minneapolis, call me."

The flight to Atlanta was bad, but on the way to New York, the fear seemed to slip away. Lucas had reached a tolerance level: his fifth flight in three days. He'd never flown that much in his life. More or less relaxed, he found a notepad in his overnight case and doodled on it, working it out.

Bobby Rich hadn't been assigned to work the case because he had the best qualifications-he'd been assigned simply because he knew a guy who knew Red Reed. So that Red Reed could call his friend and insist that the friend pass information to the cops about the shooting of Fred Waites.

Except that Reed hadn't been there at all. The man with white hair and the deep tan was an O'Dell invention. Lucas grinned despite himself. In a crooked way, it was very nice: lots of layers.

He closed his eyes, avoiding the next question: Did Lily know?

At La Guardia he saw a copy of the Times with Bekker as a blond woman. He bought a copy, queued for a cab, got a buck-toothed driver who wanted to talk.

"Bekker, huh?" buck-tooth said, his eyes on the rearview mirror. He could see the picture on the front of the paper as Lucas read the copy inside. "There's a goofball for ya. Dressed up like a woman."

"Yeah."

"This last one, man, took her right out of a parking garage. Girlfriend says Bekker was right there with them, could've took them both."

Lucas folded the paper down and looked at the back of the driver's head. "There's another one? Today?"

"Yeah, this morning. They found her in a parking lot with the wire gag and the cut-off eyelids and the whole works. I say, when they get him, they ought to hang him off a street sign by his nuts. Be an example."

Lucas nodded and said, "Listen, forget about the hotel. Take me to Midtown South."