him. His father would be pleased to see that Larry had made it. He’d be proud.
It didn’t happen that way. Ricardo had come to him.
Larry had always heard, from the do-good types and folks at church, how a boy needed a man in his life to make him whole. But Larry had been doing fine before Ricardo Holley had sought him out. And when he did, it was as if Larry were terminal. He’d been ill since the day that cripple came to see him with his honeyed words and slick grin. It was like Ricardo had pulled him into an open grave. The man stank of death.
FOURTEEN
Tim McCarthy had short curly hair of ginger and gray, a freckled face deeply lined from age and the sun, and a sturdy build. He sat at a table in a nondescript bar in a large hotel on New Jersey Avenue, not too far from his Internal Affairs Bureau office, located in MPD headquarters on Indiana. He had walked over to the hotel at lunchtime to meet Spero Lucas. Lucas sat across the table from him, his Moleskine notebook and iPhone set neatly before him. Both of them were having iced teas.
“Lawrence Holley,” said Lucas.
“Goes by Larry,” said McCarthy. “Narcotics and Special Investigations. What’s your interest?”
“Just curious. He drifted into the margins of something I’m working on for a client.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“I can’t say more.”
“It’s confidential, huh?”
“Exactly.”
McCarthy laced his fingers together and rested both hands on the table. He had a serene, confident way about him, a trait seen most often in military and law-enforcement types.
“Well?” said Lucas.
“I can’t tell you anything,” said McCarthy. “I agreed to meet you as a favor to Tom Petersen.”
“So if you had something on Larry Holley…”
Smile fans appeared at the corners of McCarthy’s eyes. “That would be confidential.”
“You must have looked into him after our phone conversation.”
“Something about the last name was familiar,” said McCarthy.
“It rang a bell.”
“More like an alarm.”
“But you’re not going to tell me why.”
“No.”
“Well, then,” said Lucas amiably. McCarthy was one of those people, you looked at him and liked him. Lucas guessed no one had ever swung on this guy in a bar just for fun.
“Petersen said you served in Fallujah,” said McCarthy.
“I did. And you went in with the initial wave.”
“First Recon Battalion. I was just a chaplain.”
“Just.”
McCarthy looked Lucas over. “I heard you guys caught hell.”
“It was interesting.”
“I wish I could help you,” said McCarthy.
“I understand.”
They shook hands firmly across the table.
HE TOOK a bike ride that afternoon. He rode all the way to Lake Artemesia in Berwyn Heights, Maryland, a twenty-five-mile round trip, some of it into a headwind, on roads and the Northwest Branch trail. His idea was to lose himself in his pedaling and empty his brain to the degree that something new would come to him upon his return. He was pleasantly exhausted and ripped but no smarter after his shower. He sat in his reading chair and looked out onto the street, thinking, I have come to that part of the road that simply ends.
His eyes fluttered. He knew that he was about to drift to sleep. He thought, Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not good enough for this job. I was a pretty good marine. I came back alive, though that was luck as much as training or skill. I protected my brothers. I killed men who were trying to kill me. But I am not much of an investigator, because I seem to have gone nowhere on this case at all.
His phone rang on the end table beside him. The light had dimmed in the room. He had been asleep for a while.
Lucas looked at the screen, showing a 301 number. He did not recognize the caller’s name.
“Yes?”
“Spero Lucas?”
“That’s right. Who’s calling?”
“My name’s Pete Gibson. I think you and I should meet.”
“What is this?”
“It’s about Holley.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“Tim McCarthy. We were on the force together, way back in time.” Gibson coughed. “I’m free tonight.”
“Where?”
“You’re over in Sixteenth Street Heights…”
“How do you know that?”
“Let’s see, that’s near Colorado Avenue… Too bad Cagney’s is closed.”
“ Been closed. There’s a place up on Georgia, between Geranium and Floral, coupla doors away from the Humane Society.”
“Christ,” said Gibson. “ That joint. Give me an hour. I’m coming down from Frederick.”
“How will I know you?”
“I’m sixty,” said Gibson. “I still look like police.”
Lucas ended the call. He got up out of his chair, energized.
LEO’S HAD an oak bar going front to back, twelve stools, and several deuces and four tops. The walls held a poster advertising an old Dick Gregory concert, a signed head shot of Jackie “Moms” Mabley, a Globe poster of James Brown and the Famous Flames at the Howard, and travel posters of little white houses set against the blue of the Aegean Sea. The jukebox was filled with obscure soul singles. The place was owned by a Greek, the bald, eagle-beaked Leo, who, like Lucas’s brother, was only called Leonidas by his mother. It was a neighborhood spot that serviced all types, determined alcoholics and casual drinkers alike.
Lucas had spotted Pete Gibson right away when he’d come through the door. Gibson indeed looked like a cop. He had a strong jaw, a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard, pinkish skin, and a clean dome shaved close on the sides. His light blue eyes were intense; his smile was white and tight. He wore neatly creased slacks and a plaid button- down shirt with a pack of Marlboro Reds in the breast pocket. Lucas guessed that the shirt’s label read Arrow or Gant.
They were seated at a deuce in the center of the room. Gibson was drinking a Bud Light straight from the neck. Lucas was working on a Heineken. An old song with a female vocalist and big production was coming from the juke, and two guys standing up at the bar were arguing loudly about the singer.
“It’s Bettye LaVette,” said one of the men, a short guy with a white-man’s Afro that looked like a Harpo wig.
“Nope,” said the other man, blond, rail thin, with a little beer hump. “It’s that chick who did the Stones song before the Stones. What the fuck is the name of that song?” It came to him and he slammed his palm down on the bar. “ ‘Time Is on My Side.’ Irma Thomas!”
“But what’s the name of this song?”
“Buy me a drink and I’ll tell ya.”
“Drink this,” said the guy in the wig.
“All the Einsteins come in here,” said Gibson, jerking his thumb in the direction of the two guys at the bar. “I
