The hooker, he thought at once. Something happened to the hooker, so now the Secret Service is here to question me about her. He hoped it was nothing serious. He hoped nobody had killed her or raped her.
“You had some drinks there,” Horne said.
“I did.”
Had she been poisoned?
“You paid for them with a hundred-dollar bill,” Horne said.“This bill,” he said, and removed from the inside pocket of the bulky blue parka a narrow folder that looked like the kind you put money in for a Christmas gift to your mailman or your doorman, except that it had a gold star embossed on the front of it. Horne opened the folder and took a hundred-dollar bill from it. “Recognize it?” he asked, and handed it to Will.
“All hundred-dollar bills look alike to me,” he said.
“Where’d you getthis hundred-dollar bill?” Horne asked.
“I won it in a crap game,” Will said.
“Won a hundred dollars in a crap game.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where? What crap game?”
“Pickup game on Laramie,” he said.
“Where on Laramie?”
“Don’t recall the address,” he said.
Two different agendas here, he was thinking. Man here wants to know all about this hundred-dollar bill, I want to make sure he don’t find out I stole it.
“This all you won in the crap game?”
“Just the hundred, that’s all.”
“Went out to spend it, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Listen, he thought, why the fuck are you asking all these questions?
But knew better than to say.
Two different agendas here.
“I talked to a girl named Jasmine before I came up here,” Horne said.
“Oh?”
“Got your name from her.”
“So?”
“Ran a computer check.”
Will said nothing.
“Seems you ran into a little trouble here in this city, is that right, Wilbur?”
“It’s Will, by the way.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know that, Will.”
“That’s okay,” Will said.
He was thinking it still didn’t take the curse off the oldest cop trick in the world, calling a suspected perp by his first name, which reduced him to the status of a menial. What this was here wasWill andMr. David Horne.
“Burglarized a gas station seven years ago, did time for the deed up at Castleview. That the only burglary you ever committed, Will?”
“The one and only,” Will lied.
“That’s commendable,” Horne said. “But nonetheless, on the basis of this hundred-dollar bill here, I was able to obtain a search warrant.”
“A what?”
“I believe you heard me,” Horne said, and handed Will a court order with a judge’s signature and all on the bottom of it, authorizing a search of this very apartment for monies paid as ransom …
“Ransom?” Will said.
“Ransom in a kidnapping, is what it says.Ransom money, Will.”
“That’s not my bill,” Will said at once. “I told you. I won it in a crap game.”
“Well, that’s good, Will, because the serial numbers on this bill match the serial numbers on one of the bills paid as ransom in a kidnapping case we’re investigating. Do you understand the implications of that?”
“I’m not a kidnapper,” Will said.
“That’s good, too, Will, because I have a search warrant to look for anyother bills that may have been part of the ransom payment,” Horne said, and took off the blue parka to reveal a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. The suit jacket was taut over bulging pectorals and broad shoulders. The man was a fitness freak. He took off
