“This about that party thing we spoke about on the phone?” Kenny asked, knowing it wasn’t.

“Nope.” I waved to the waitress for a second round. “That was bullshit.”

“I figured. We ain’t exactly blood brothers, you and me. What it’s about then?”

“Larry’s missing.”

He didn’t react, but I didn’t read much into his deadpan. The gears continued churning. Then, “Missing? Missing how?”

I ignored the question. The waitress came, plopped our drinks down. When she tried clearing Kenny’s first glass, he stared at her so coldly I thought she might freeze in place. “Leave it!” She did.

“He was acting weird the last time I saw him,” I said.

“Weird?”

“Nervous. Jumpy. Not like Larry at all. Then. .”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. We got together back in Coney on the boardwalk and he started talking crazy about the good old days.”

“Good old days, my ass. Fucking job!”

“I know what you mean,” I said, just trying to see if he’d say something on his own. He didn’t disappoint.

“You do, huh? I remember you being a cunt, Prager.”

“Nice.”

“Ah, you was like all them new cops, more worried about the skells and scumbags than the victims.”

“For every corner guys like you cut, you create two more. I was worried about following the law.”

“Fuck the law! The only law is the law of the jungle. You pussies never understood that.”

“Was Larry Mac a cunt?”

Kenny actually laughed, an icy breeze blowing through O’Hearn’s. “Larry was a lot of things.”

“Was?”

“Don’t be such a fucking asshole, Prager. You know what I mean.”

“I do?”

“What, you want me to throw you a beating? With that bum leg a yours, it’d take me like ten seconds to kick your ass twice around the block.”

“Now there’s something to be proud of.”

“Get to the point, asshole.”

“Larry missing is the point.”

“That’s what you say, but even if he is, I don’t know shit about it. I owe Larry Mac,” he said, taking his eyes off me for the second time since we sat down. “He kept me on the job till I made my twenty. It was a fucking miracle that he pulled it off. I was like a poster boy for I.A.B. for the last half of my career. Then after a few years, he got me this gig with the Marshal Service. Job’s a fucking tit.”

I had made the acquaintance of two retired U.S. marshals during the Moira Heaton investigation. One killed himself. The other tried to kill me. Only time in my life I exchanged gunfire with anyone. I think I hit him, but I didn’t stick around to check. Got the hell out of there and didn’t bother looking back.

“Okay. You hear anything, let me know.” I threw my card and a twenty on the table. I made to go.

He grabbed my forearm. “You really think something’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

He let go of my arm and studied my card in earnest. “I hear anything, I’ll call.” He slipped the card into his wallet.

I took a few steps and turned back around.

“What?” he growled. “You gonna annoy me some more?”

“You remember D Rex Mayweather?”

If I thought I was going to catch him off guard with that, I was wrong.

“That dead nigger? Yeah, what about him?”

“Nothing.”

I became acutely aware of the few black faces seated around O’Hearn’s. Burton had been purposely loud. It served the dual purpose of embarrassing me and of challenging anyone in hearing distance. Kenny Burton hadn’t changed. He was the same asshole I had known twenty years before. You could set your watch by him.

That night as I stared up at the ceiling, it wasn’t Kenny Burton’s face I was seeing in the dark. It wasn’t Larry’s. Not Katy’s. Not what was left of Malik’s either. What I saw was a pair of almond-shaped brown eyes burning with a cold fire set against dark, creamy skin. I saw an angular jaw, a perfect, straight nose with slightly flaring nostrils above plush, angry lips. All of it framed in hair blacker than the darkness itself.

Cops in cars can’t follow suspects worth a shit. Even if they were to possess the requisite skills, the damned unmarked cars would give them away. Unmarked cars are about as inconspicuous as the Good-year blimp. So it didn’t take more than a glance in my rearview mirror to spot the unadorned blue Chevy as it pulled away from the curb. The whole way to Sarah’s school, the car trailed half a block behind, the driver trying to keep other traffic between us.

I kissed Sarah, watched her walk into the schoolyard and up the front steps. When she had disappeared behind the heavy metal doors, I rolled slowly into traffic, making certain to get caught at the first red light. My tail was four cars back in the right hand lane, the same lane as me. I scanned the cross street for oncoming cars and, seeing it was clear, put my foot to the floor. With tires smoking, I swerved across the left lane, through the red light, and onto the cross street.

With my foot still hard on the pedal, I drove a further three blocks before making a sharp left down a dead end street that ran perpendicular to the Belt Parkway. About a hundred feet from the dead end, I backed up an empty driveway until the houses on either side obscured my car from view. I waited. Either they would give up before cruising this street or, as I hoped, they would roll down the street, distracted, annoyed, simply going through the motions rather than searching for me under every stone.

Neither hearing it nor seeing it, I sort of sensed their car coming. Then I caught a glimpse of its nose as it rolled down the block. Went right past me. As it passed, I pulled out of the driveway, slammed on the brakes and put it in park. In a moot display, the cop at the wheel of the Chevy threw it in reverse. Too little too late. My car was widthwise

When the window disappeared halfway into the door, I recognized the driver. I had seen her face on the backs of my eyelids and suspended in the dark air above my bed only a few hours ago. But before I could react, Detective Melendez threw her door open, smacking it hard into my bad knee. Reflexively, I backed up and bent down to rub it. Big mistake. Melendez and her partner were out of the car and on me like wolves on a crippled lamb.

“All right, dickweed, you know the drill,” said Bronx Irish as he threw me into the side of their car.

Still favoring my bad leg, I hit the car awkwardly, the right side of my rib cage taking the full force of impact. Hurt like a son of a bitch and it didn’t do much for my respiration.

“Assume the position,” she barked.

Still trying to catch my breath, I was slow to follow her instructions. Big mistake number two. My arms were being yanked up and thrust forward, palms slapped down on the hood of the Chevy. Bronx Irish kicked my legs apart and back. He frisked me, removing my wallet and.38.

“So, Mr. Prager,” Detective Melendez said, “you always speed like that in a school zone?” It was a question for which she wanted no answer. “That was quite a display of stupidity you put on back there.”

“I noticed I was being followed. How was I supposed to know you were cops?”

“Don’t be such an asshole, Prager,” said Bronx Irish. “What should I do with him, Carmella?”

“Cuff him and throw him in the back.”

“Hey, I-”

“Shut the fuck up!” she cut me off. “Keys in the car?”

“What?”

“Are your fucking keys in the car, Prager?”

“Yes, Detective.”

“John, you take care of him. I’ll park his car right.”