‘He’s called Redtop, on account of his preference for wearing the same top every day of his life. I gave him the name.’
‘What about his real name for payroll?’
‘I pay him cash. He’s called Mo. I don’t know any more.’
‘You got an address?’
‘No. Don’t know where he lives. I pay him peanuts and I pay him daily. He’s only just started. He’s the cheapest labour I ever had so I ain’t asking questions.’
‘You want to be an accessory after the fact in a major homicide case, Mr Marconi? Now, give us his address.’
The man went into the back store and came out with a ledger. He put it on the desk and turned it to them.
‘This is his employment record. It’s all I got.’ On the page was the name Mo and a straight line under the address. ‘I don’t know where this man lives or even if he has a place to live. He carries a laundry bag everywhere, maybe he lives out of that.’
Harper handed him a card. ‘The moment you hear from this guy, you call me. He could be a killer.’
Benny laughed. ‘He’s not a killer. He can’t even swat a fly.’
‘Call us,’ said Tom.
They didn’t know if this had anything to do with the American Devil but Harper felt this was the nearest they’d been since the beginning. They just had to find this guy now. How hard could it be to find a man like that in Harlem?
They walked out of the store. ‘I’ve got a team coming up to watch the 7-Eleven. What do you say we do, Tom?’ asked Eddie.
Tom wasn’t sure. He stopped for a moment. ‘The thing that’s bothering me is this. If he’s got Lucy James hidden somewhere in the city and we spook him, she could starve to death. We got to tread carefully. Can you get any more bodies up here to walk the streets?’
‘I’ll call in some favours,’ said Eddie.
Chapter Sixty-Five
East Harlem
November 28, 3.00 p.m.
‘Here’s your guy,’ Eddie said as he tossed a folder into Harper’s lap. ‘This drawing is based on the description given by Lucy James’s boyfriend.’ The police drawing was a close enough fit to the man they’d seen at the store. The big guy with the red turtleneck. They had an ID but no name.
The next part was harder — finding someone in a city of eight million. Mo was likely to be on foot. As far as they knew he didn’t have a vehicle so he was likely to be only a short distance from the 7-Eleven and Washington House. All they had to do was get a team together and start asking the streetwalkers and searching the areas in the radius.
Eddie had done a job on this one too. He hadn’t told Tom a thing. They pulled into the car park of North General Hospital in East Harlem and there in front of them were six detectives from the NYPD. Cops who had not taken to the mayor’s bureaucratic reforms. They wanted to help out a cop with good instincts. They also wanted to shake the hand of the man who’d floored Lieutenant Jarvis, twice.
A detective called MacGyver spoke for the group.
‘We understand you need help on this. Help of the unofficial kind. We’re happy to do charity work, we’re that kind of people.’
Harper smiled. He outlined the case against Redtop. He was the last person to see Lottie Bixley alive and he was spotted moments before Lucy James’s disappearance. And the bonus was that this kidnapper might have some connection to the serial killer called the American Devil. All the team had to do was to spread out and get the low- down from every wino, lowlife and prostitute in the area and then see if they couldn’t track Redtop down.
They worked in pairs. Harper teamed up with a rookie cop by the name of Shane Dell. He was a clean-cut redhead with a clear sense of justice.
They walked the area non-stop for a couple of hours. They must’ve stopped and talked to over a hundred people. Some just ignored them, others tried to help but had nothing. There were a couple of near misses — people thought they recognized the picture but then changed their minds. They had one thing that was helping them, though: solidarity. This was a man who might have murdered a prostitute, so they found the hookers happy to talk for once.
At the western side of Marcus Garvey Memorial Park, they got their first positive identification. Shane Dell approached a group of prostitutes sitting on a low wall next to a basketball court. He talked to them for five minutes and then called Harper across.
‘This is Tom Harper. He believes someone took the woman we were talking about.’ They looked up and nodded. ‘Tell him what you told me.’
A black woman in her late twenties moved her head back and forth and looked around her suspiciously.
‘I’m only saying we’ve seen that guy. Don’t know who he is. He’s one of the roaming-lonely you see around. Always carrying a heavy bag. Lost his mind.’
‘Where have you seen him?’
‘Around. Nowhere in particular. He sits in the parks. I seen him sitting in the parks.’
They couldn’t help any more so the two policemen thanked them and moved on. At six, the unofficial search team all met up at a restaurant.
Bridges and Swanson had the same experience. Plenty of interest, not a lot of positives, but two who’d definitely seen him around. MacGyver and Lacey had nothing. Eddie and his partner had had better luck.
‘We got a positive who identified him as “Redtop”,’ he said.
‘Anything we can go on?’ asked Harper.
‘They’ve seen him twice around East 126th Street. We could put a couple of guys on the street corner and see what comes up. How about it?’
Harper agreed and they sent Bridges and Swanson to watch East 126th Street. The rest of them drank their coffee and went back to the search.
Chapter Sixty-Six
East Harlem
November 28, 8.12 p.m.
Mo was standing in a shop front with his suitcase by his side. His coat was buttoned up high to hide his red rollneck. The cops were after him again. He’d seen them around the store and called Benny from a callbox. Benny told him that they wanted to speak to him. They thought he’d murdered someone. Mo hadn’t murdered anyone. He’d only ever loved Lottie. He was terrified. He didn’t dare go home or back to the store. So he had to hide out in an abandoned building for most of the day, but he couldn’t stop himself worrying.
The thought of having no more nights with Lucy was hard. He loved Lucy now. She was warm like a big hound and her skin was soft. She was just about perfect. And now she was up in his dirty little apartment with no one to care for her. It was breaking his heart.
At one time during the evening, Mo walked by the end of his street and saw a cop standing right there, only a few hundred yards from his building and from Lucy James. The fact of the matter was Redtop wasn’t going to be able to visit the girl from the park again for a while — not while the cops had his apartment covered. Lucy would just have to wait until this whole thing had blown over. Then he could go back to see her and give her some yoghurt and fresh fruit. In a couple of weeks or so, he could fetch her.
In the doorway, Mo entertained himself by capturing moths that flew towards the bright shop light. He had
