The ninety-minute drive down tree-lined I-64 and through the heart of Hampton always affected John like a time warp. He still imagined the serpentine stop-and-go service lanes choking East Mercury's shopping thoroughfare on either side, instead of the wide, modern eight-lane highway where he took the off ramp from I-64.
At the far eastern end of the city, the pace of change had slowed. Parts of Mallory Street, I-64, and Mercury Boulevard, still concrete as they stretched toward the Chesapeake Bay—the same as in the 1960's—made cars bump along, their tires going clack-a-clack over the seams in the road as if they rode over railroad tracks. Lost in the days when Giant Supermarket really was "Open Air," John turned off on King Street going south.
He circled the brown brick monolith that housed Hampton PD and decided to park on the street. He headed through the lobby to the desk and flashed the receptionist his badge. "Detective John Robin, Richmond PD. I need to speak with somebody in the detective bureau, if anyone's available."
The clerk spoke into her desk phone and hung up. "Investigations," she said. "I can buzz Rita to show you the way."
"I know where it is," said John. "Thanks." A quick trip past a display case full of trophies and down the back stairs led him to a plain brown door marked "Investigations." He let himself into the waiting room, a plain white cubicle with molded plastic chairs. A tall white man in a suit and tie, obviously a detective, waited for him at a reception counter behind glass that made the place look like a doctor's office.
"Detective John Robin?"
John walked up and showed his badge.
"Let me come around and let you in." The other man crossed behind the reception counter and opened a door at the side of the room. "Come on back." He held out a hand. "Detective Stan Brooks."
John reached out for a handshake. "Sorry for showing up unannounced. I'm here chasing down a lead on the police shooting we just had."
Brooks's face grew solemn and he shook his head. "That was just ..." he said, and stopped. It was all over the TV and radio in Richmond, and bad news traveled fast. "You have my condolences, Detective, and everyone else's here. You'll be seeing some of us at the funeral."
"Thank you," said John.
"How can we help?"
"I'm trying to run down some info on a CI of Pride's. A George Evan Clay. He was calling Pride at home over the past several days, and turns out he lives here. Does this guy snitch for you at all?"
"Come on back, I'll take you to the guy you should talk to." Brooks led the way into a squad area, to a tiny gray cubicle inside a bigger gray cubicle crammed with desks, computers, and plainclothes cops.
"Hey, Edwards," said Brooks, and a round ebony face popped up, followed by a portly body sliding backwards into the aisle in a squeaky office chair. "Randall Edwards, Detective John Robin, here from Richmond PD about the police shooting."
Edwards stood up and put out a broad, callused hand. He had a warm, firm grip. "Rand," he said. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"John," said John. "Thanks. He was a good guy, the best. He brought me on the squad."
"What can I do for you?"
Brooks pulled up a plastic chair for himself and one for John. John sat.
"Looking for a CI named George Evan Clay," said John. "I thought it was strange, because phone records have him calling Pride at home, and Clay lives here as far as I know. Does he work for you?"
"There's a tale," Edwards sank into his desk chair. It squeaked as he leaned back. "How much time you got?"
"All night, if that's what it takes," said John.
Edwards squeaked closer to his computer. "G. Evan Clay," he announced, pecking at his keyboard. "One prior, pimping girls out near the White Rabbit on Pembroke. Do not call him 'George.' Street name 'Cabbage.' Think it has to do with the hair."
A mug shot of a ruggedly handsome, blond Caucasian youth with a cleft chin popped onscreen. His unruly mop of beachy waves did look a little like a cabbage.
"Twenty-three last September," said Edwards. "This guy grew up in Ridley Circle Homes in 'Newport Bad News,' same as Michael Vick. Had to be the only white kid in the place. Lived with his grandmother. Graduated from Heritage in 2005, straight A student. Smart kid. Think I've got a picture of him at thirteen in here somewhere. Yeah."
A picture of an unbearably cute, short, skinny thirteen-year-old replaced the cabbage picture. It looked like it had come from a school yearbook. Little Evan Clay stood against a brick wall with a few classmates, distinguished from the other children as much by his shorter height as by his shining white skin. Only his hair was the same.
"'Course you know, in places like Ridley Circle Homes and Dickerson Court, a little white kid is going to get hassled."
"Let me guess," John said. "He's in Dump Squad." Dump Squad was the East End Newport News chapter of the Bloods street gang.
"No," said Edwards, and looked over his shoulder.
"No?" John raised his eyebrows.
Edwards waited a beat, then said, "He's a Slump Mobber." Slump Mobb and the Bang Gang were the two smaller gangs in the East End.
"Evan tried out for basketball and football at Heritage, but he wasn't ever going to be good enough to get a scholarship, so he went out for wrestling and judo instead." Edwards popped up another picture. The skinny thirteen-year-old had grown over two feet and put on muscle like the Incredible Hulk. "Thugs started leaving the guy alone about this time. 'Less they had a firearm or two. Clay was dealing his own little dope business at Heritage and at Warwick High School, and you know Strych likes to rob fellow dealers."
John nodded. "Strych" was short for "Strychnine," the infamous leader of the Dump Squad gang, who'd been brought up on way too many felony charges that never stuck. Every so often one would hit the papers here, and sometimes even in Richmond.
Edwards turned in his chair and raised an eyebrow. "You heard of Safe Streets Peninsula Task Force, run out of the FBI office in Newport News?"
"When a police station gets firebombed, it's hard not to hear about it," said John. Harbor Homes was another low-income project next to Dickerson Court, and last year local gang members had set fire to a police substation there. For decades it had been business as usual in the East End, but a recent spate of murders attributed to Strych plus a police station firebombing had been too much. The Safe Streets Peninsula Task Force had been formed, made up of Newport News PD officers, the FBI, and federal and state prosecutors.
"You're looking at the only member from Hampton PD," said Edwards. He tapped his keyboard and turned his squeaky chair around. Incredible Hulk Clay glowered over his shoulder.
"Shortly after that firebombing incident, Clay comes waltzing in here. Says he doesn't want to testify, and he doesn't want to go through Newport News PD, but he's got a wealth of information that can make their case against Strych. Well, after the firebombing they'd take any information any way they could get it, so I was Deep Throating messages back and forth. Clay put several guys at the firebombing—with corroborating evidence—and once they're in jail, he says, 'Ask so-and-so this. Offer to trade him this.' And they're getting folks to roll over on Strych that way. That's how we got him. It looks like it's going to be quite a case."
"Really?" said John. "How can I find this guy for a little chat?"
"Eh, that's the thing," said Brooks. "We haven't got an address on him now. Edwards was looking for him the other day. He drove out to where he's supposed to be living on Shell Road, and they've never heard of him. I drove out to the address on his driver's license, and it's the Mailboxes N' More on East Pembroke."
"His grandmother had a stroke and got moved to the nursing home on Mallory," said Edwards. "She doesn't know where he is—she says—and the staff hasn't seen him. But her bill's paid six months ahead. By Clay. Somebody else is living in her old apartment in Ridley. They said Clay had a new place in Dickerson, but there's nobody in that building at all now. They're tearing Dickerson Court down this fall, you know."
Now John was surprised. "I hadn't heard that."
"Harbor Homes, too," said Brooks. "Two wretched hives of scum and villainy, thrown back on the coal heap." John looked past him to see a little Darth Vader statuette perched next to the computer screen on the next desk over. Must be Brooks's desk.
"Shit," said John. "They'll be able to lay off half of Newport News patrol division."
Everybody laughed.
"Does Clay have any known associates I can interview?"
Edwards pecked at his keyboard and gave John several names and addresses.
***
"Fuck this, man. I don't have to talk to no cop. I ain't even under arrest, I don't have to go nowhere with no police!"
John stood on a porch at Ridley Circle Homes, the third on the list he'd copied at Hampton PD. He'd had similar results at the first two addresses he'd covered. His current interviewee, a young black male in corn rows, wearing a Sean John T-shirt and new sneakers, slit his eyes at him.
"Mr. Green, I don't need to take you anywhere. I'm looking for 'Cabbage' Clay, if you've seen him around lately. And he isn't under arrest, either."
"You ain't even from Newport Bad News! I don't have to talk to nobody from no Richmond PD!"
John had noticed an overweight, middle-aged black female coming down the street behind him. Now he turned and watched her coming up the walk. She looked him up and down; she had overheard their last exchange. Her glasses were on crooked, her short hair stood out behind a couple of plastic barrettes, and she walked like she might have a bad knee. She wore a blue Walmart apron.
She pulled herself up the cement steps. John held out a hand; she ignored him.
"Lamar, what the hell? Can I get home from work one day without the damn po-lice at my door?"
"Momma, I didn't do nothin'," said Lamar. "He here about Cabbage, and he ain't even Newport News po-lice."
John showed her his badge and ID. "Detective John Robin, ma'am, Richmond PD. I'm looking for an Evan 'Cabbage' Clay, used to live around here. You have any idea who I'm talking about?"
The woman shifted a purse the size of a backpack and stopped on the stoop. "I know who you talking about, but he ain't lived here in a while. His grandma moved into a nursing home and they gone, that's all we know."
Lamar stepped back to let his mother in. John opened his mouth to speak, and Mrs. Green slipped through the door, pushing her son out of view. "I told you all we know, Mr. Police Officer, now will you please leave my son alone?" And with that the door closed in John's face.
He'd saved the one Hampton name for last. The street was close to his boyhood home, and he was more familiar with the area.
***
The sun sank low into the trees as he pulled up in front of a yellow clapboard house at the end of Sixth Street. The concrete steps crumbled on the edges; the orange trim needed painting. Crunchy leaves from last fall littered the driveway and yard.
An old Toyota sat in the driveway, but after his third knock John suspected there was no one home. Then he glanced at the window overlooking the porch and saw the curtains flutter.
It took five minutes before he heard deadbolts sliding, and the front door opened. An overweight black man with salt and pepper in his hair, leaning on a walker, peered around the edge of the door at him.
John showed his badge. "Good evening, sir. I'm Detective John Robin from the Richmond Police Department. I'm looking for Reginald Washington."
The old man squinted behind eighties-style glasses in big plastic frames. "What did my grandchild do all the way up in Richmond?"
"You're Mr. Washington?"
"Yes, I am."
"I'm not looking for Reginald in connection with any crime, sir. I need to interview him about a friend of his."
Washington frowned. Deep lines ran from his nose to his mouth. "Well, you won't find him here. His aunt asked if he could come stay with me, to get him out of the projects, 'cause of the crowd he was running with. I told him not to bring drugs into my house, and what do I find but a crack pipe and some old powdery stuff. He is no longer here. I asked him to leave."
"Did he move back in with his mother, sir?"
"Neither one of us know where she is. She doesn't answer her home phone and her cell phone is disconnected. I won't drive down there in the projects to look for her. I called her boyfriend. He said they broke up." Washington started to shake his head, then stopped himself. "She'll turn up. She always does."
"Your daughter, sir?"
"Yeah. I don't know what she thinks she's doing. She's a crackhead. My other daughter's a nurse."
John shifted his weight to his other foot. "Do you have any idea where Reginald might be?"
"He came tappin' on my door a couple nights ago, asking to come back in, so he's around here somewhere. Probably over where Buckroe Junior High used to be. There's homeless people hanging around there."
"Thank you very much, sir. I'll check there." John turned and started down the steps, eager to finish here before dark.
Halfway down the steps he stopped and turned around. "If I find him, is there anything I can tell him for you?"
"No drugs in this house," said Washington. "And no dope money in here, either."
"I'll tell him."
***
Buckroe Junior High School had once occupied a lot on Buckroe Avenue nine blocks from the beach. John's mother had told many stories about the cockroaches that infested the place, and some funny instructors she'd there as a preteen. Now part of an old chain link fence was all that remained, and the paved oval where children had once boarded the bus. A short drive, McGivney Lane, flanked the lot next to what looked like a mission or a church. A Catholic school and a parsonage took up large lots alongside the old school lot. John wasn't Catholic, so he'd had little reason to come up here growing up.
He pulled in and parked. A muted orange sun slipped toward the houses and trees on the horizon. John shaded his eyes and looked across the neat, city-mowed lot, dotted with purple flowers and dandelions, to the thick reeds, taller than he was, that formed a border on three sides. He scanned the brush line, saw an opening, and started across the field.
Recent rains had turned it boggy. Mosquitoes whined around his head. The ground squished under his feet and he felt cold damp seeping into his shoes. A rabbit bounded ahead of him, flashing its cottontail white.
The opening turned out to be just wide enough to drive a truck through. John followed a path alongside a ditch with a little running stream, on a C-shaped track. A heap of burned trash marked the end of the trail. Circling the pile, John poked at an old hospital fetal monitor and a half-burned copy of Pilgrim's Progress with his foot. Nothing looked remotely useful for someone living out in the open.
He scanned the reeds to his right. Sure enough, a small beaten track led through a labyrinth of reeds. John stepped in and inched along, trying to avoid branches that could leave ticks on his socks and sleeves.
In a small clearing a few yards up, he found a Dollar Store shopping cart. Someone had been collecting aluminum cans—all beer cans, he noted with a smirk. A red vinyl tarp lay wadded up in the child seat. In the reeds a few feet away, the path continued, looking more like a tunnel as the sun dropped lower. John didn't see or hear anyone and he really didn't want to go in there.
He tried walking behind the cart and lifting the back end to turn it around.
A young black man appeared from the reeds on the other side of the clearing. "Don't mess with my shit, man! That's bus fa—oh, shit!"
He disappeared amid enough crackling and rustling to flush a whole flock of rabbits. A whispered, "Five-oh! Fuck!" floated back to John.
John felt eyes on him from the thick reeds. He held up his badge and announced, "Yep. Five-oh, fellas. Everybody out!"
More rustlings and whisperings. "I ain't going out there! Fuck!"
"Come on, gentlemen! I'm not here to arrest anybody. Unless you make me come in there after you."
After a whispered conversation, a grizzled-haired white man stepped out, followed by a white boy in a stained white t-shirt and blue plaid shorts that looked like baggy boxers.
John sighed. "Come on! Everybody!"
A twig snapped, and another young black man slow-footed out into the clearing.
"All right, look. Come out, now. I don't have time for this bullshit. Come out, or you will get dragged out."
Low curses filtered out from the reeds, and the first young black man came out. The expressions on all four faces morphed from glum to resentful, and John didn't hear anything else in the underbrush, so he supposed he had everyone.
"Leave us alone, cop, we ain't doing nothing," said the white boy.
"One of you guys Reginald Washington?" The breeze wafted toward John, and he had to fight to control his expression. Clearly, this group hadn't seen showers for a while.
Three of them stared back at John without a word. The first black youth John had seen looked right and left at the others.
The second black youth laughed and punched him in the shoulder. "Look at you checkin' us out, Reg!"
"You're Reginald?"
"The fuck you want, man?" Reginald lowered his head and gave it one loose, lolling shake. A hair pick stuck out from his short Afro at the back of his head. Long, skinny arms dangled from the sleeves of his wrinkled blue t-shirt, ending in hands which, like the shirt, were much too big for him. His skinny legs in dirty denim looked a mile long.
"Got a message for you," said John. "From your grandfather." He remembered the Heavens Pizza Parlor a few blocks back. "Reg, you look like you could use a pizza. Let me tell you about your grandpa and I'll buy you dinner and a beer."
Reginald eyed him through slit lids. "Where my grandpa at? Something happen to my grandpa?"
"No, nothing like that," said John. "Come on with me and I'll tell you."
Reginald tilted his head, considering.
"Come on," said John. "We'll bring a couple of large pizzas back for your buddies, too."
Reginald swiped one big mitt in a round, angry arc. "You can't just tell me what the fuck this is, man? Man, you cops ain't shit, man."
John folded his arms and waited.
"Reg," the young white boy whispered. "Dude, we're hungry."
***
Heavens on Buckroe Avenue was nothing fancy, but the pizza rivaled Bottoms Up in Richmond. After they had ordered and claimed one of only three tables in the tiny serving area, John leaned forward and started in. "What are you doing hanging around there? You're twenty-two, Reg. Why don't you get yourself a job?"
"Like this?" Reginald Washington splayed his hands to indicate his wrinkled t-shirt and stained denim. "Where I supposed to take a bath at? The Chesapeake Bay? Old man thew me out without even bus fare. I'm tryin' to get back home to the East End, but I don't know nobody to give me no ride."
John shook his head as their waitress put two mugs of cold beer in front of them. "You don't need to go back to the East End. That's where you were dealing drugs. With Cabbage Clay, right? You met him in high school?"
Reginald glowered at him again from under his thick dark brows. "What you axin' me that for?"
John leaned backward and draped one arm across the back of his chair. "Information. You tell me all you know about Cabbage Clay from Ridley Circle, and then you get dinner and a beer."
"Aw, fuck you, cop!" Reg slung both hands forward in frustration and the customers at the bar turned away from their beer mugs to stare. Then Reginald eyed John through slit lids. "Where Cabbage at?"
"I don't know, that's what I'm trying to find out. He might've shot a cop up in Richmond. There's going to be a reward out for information on that, and it won't be some little thousand dollar Crime Solver's crap, either."
Reginald tilted his head, considering. He seemed about to lash out again instead of answering, but reconsidered, looking down at his paper placemat. Finally, his brows knit into a "V" over his nose. "You after Cabbage, you better git him. He bad. And don't you fucking mention my name. I don't want him whacking me."
John waited a few seconds, then tried again. "So, you met him in high school?"
"Yeah," Reg said. "In high school. My grandpa like to wear me out 'cause I couldn't pass math. I got up with Cabbage 'cause he always making straight A's. I figured that boy know how to cheat, right?" Reginald shook his head. "Naw. He just a smart dude."
"He was dealing in high school, wasn't he?"
"Oh, yeah. Had himself a nice little college fund going for a while there."
"College? So why didn't he go?"
"Man, he was trying to get in free, man. But he wasn't no Michael Vick or Allen Iverson, you know what I'm saying?" Reg took a long drink of his beer, about half the mug, and wiped foam off of his stubbly lip. "And then he say there weren't going to be no jobs anyhow and these people borrowing for college be just bankrupting themselves. He say, 'Fuck if I'm signing my whole future away when there be no damn jobs and what there is don't pay nothing!' He say, 'Work be no way to earn a living.'" Reg laughed and shook his head. "'Work be no way to earn a living.'"
"You were working for him? You were selling for him?"
Reg sipped beer. "Well, I wasn't never going to pass no math."
The waitress placed their large combination pizza on the table. John cut two slices for himself and sprinkled some Parmesan on top. Reg tore three slices from his side with his fingers, and shoved half of one slice into his mouth. His eyes widened and he gulped more beer.
"Careful," said John, watching fragrant garlic-and-pepper steam curl into the air from his slices. "You must've run into it with Slump Mobb and the Dump Squad, if you were dealing for yourselves."
"Naw, Slump Mobb already jumped us in, but Cabbage still have trouble with Strych. Strych sent out a couple soldiers beat the shit out of Cabbage. They shoot a hole in his lucky t-shirt and say they was going to shoot his gramma. They didn't mess with me, though. Me and Def, we pretty tight."
John didn't know who Def was and didn't particularly care. "So what else can you tell me about Cabbage? Where does he hang out?" He only just stopped himself from saying, "Where he hang out at?"
"When shit git hot he go up to New York. He got a connection up there."
"And you know who that is?" John put down his slice of pizza and got his pad and pen ready.
Reg stuffed the second half of his slice of pizza in his mouth and drained his mug of beer. He chewed and gulped and finally said, "That ain't worth no pizza and beer, man. You know what he do to me if I tell you that? He the whole reason Strych in jail. Cabbage planned that whole shit."
"What?"
"He say, 'I'm gonna take care of Strych. It gonna take me a while but I be gitting it done.' And he go hang with all these boys know Strych, he talking about five-oh and getting them all riled up. Then the next time a couple of them gits arrested, he goes, 'That police brutality,' and shit, and 'Nobody going to do nothing, we gotta take care of that our own selves.'"
Reg started his second slice of pizza, demolishing half of it in one chomp. John nibbled and wrote.
"That fire at the po-lice station? He plan all of that. He know better than to show up for it, though."
"He's trying to get Strych out of the way and take over," said John.
"He was trying to do that. He was. Then he say he have a way better idea." Reg spied their waitress and held up his empty mug.
John raised his eyebrows and sipped his own brew. "What was that?"
"You seen that movie with Denzel Washington, right? Had that little girl in it, um—"
"Man on Fire," said John.
"Man on Fire, that be it. Cabbage always be watching movies anyhow and he love that one. He always run the bonus stuff, you know, and they talk about these dudes in South America that deal. Here they in the game making millions, and they still in these shitty ghetto places. And they way worse than where we be living in the East End! And these South Americans be rich as movie stars, man, and they don't move out."
John swallowed pizza and sipped beer.
Reg snatched the next-to-last slice of pizza, bit the end off, and mumbled, "Cabbage, he say that stupid, man. He say, 'This fucking business dangerous. You make your money, get your ass out.' He always be laughing at Strych and Def and them, trying to be this motherfucking power and run things, run the East End."
John took a bite of crust. "So did he?"
"What you got to do to get some more motherfucking beer around here?" Reg lifted his mug again. This time their waitress saw him and started over.
"Did he?"
"Did he what?"
"'Cabbage' Clay. Ever get up out of the East End?"
"He go somewhere, man. I heard he be buying a house someplace but that was a while back. He start getting all slicked up and talking all white and shit. I don't work with him no more."
"You quit?"
"He told me he can't use me no more, man. He say we ghetto and what he be selling, his customers don't buy from people who look and talk like we do. I'm like, 'Yo, let me in, man,' and he be like, 'I got something real good now. I got to disassociate myself from people like the Mobb and the Squad.'" Reg stumbled a little over the long word. Disassociate. "So Def, he run the whole East End now. Cabbage go to all the trouble of knocking Strych out the way, now he don't want it."
"Must be up to something big," said John.
"Fuck if I know, man."
"And you're up here, when you could be working for your buddy Def?"
Reg finished his slice of pizza and grabbed the last piece. "My daddy done have a heart attack. He laying up in the hospital this big—" Reg spread his arms to indicate a gut the size of a rhino's—"and he say I'm killing him? So my aunt call my grandpa and here I am."
John finished his last bite of crust.
Reg leaned across the table on his elbows and his heavy brow furled again. "So cough it up, cop. I talked. Your turn."
"Not so fast," said John, holding up one finger to stop the waitress as she plunked a fresh mug of beer down and picked up Reg's empty. "Two more of the same pizza to go," he said. "Large."
"Yes, sir." She scribbled on her pad and walked off, and John returned his attention to Reg.
"I want to know about this New York contact of Clay's. I know you know, so you cough it up."
Reg took a sip of his beer, crossed his arms, and sat back in his seat.
John crossed his own arms and sat back. They stared at one another.
Finally, John said, "Come on, Reg. What do you want to go back to your grandfather for, anyway? You're just going to disappoint everyone, going back out on the street again, soon as you can get a bus back to your buddy Def."
"The fuck you know, cop?"
"The old man looked like he could use some help around the house. You ever think about that, while you were figuring out where to hide your crack pipe?"
"I wasn't even there two days. If he hadn't flushed that shit I'da had some damn money."
"Your grandfather seems like a good man, Reg. I'm not talking him into anything if you're just going to mess up his life." John jerked his thumb behind him toward the convenience store across the street. "I see a 'help wanted' sign right across the street. Now I know you can make change. What about it, Reg? Maybe do something useful and rake your grandpa's front yard for him?"
Reg glowered at him.
"Cabbage is right, you know. He doesn't want to be battling in the East End when he's forty and neither do you. If you even live that long. Family, roof over your head, home cooking...what's that worth?"
Reg glanced away. "Fuck you, cop."
They sat in silence. Reg's beer sat untouched on the table.
John said, "I still need to hear about New York."
Reg sighed. "I don't know the dude's name. Poblano, or something like that, but I know that ain't it, 'cause that's cheese."
Actually it was peppers, but John didn't correct him. He felt the smile around the edges of his mouth, but willed his face to relax.
"He this short little bald dude. He say he from New Jersey, but they always talking about New York. Most of the time Cabbage go up to him for product, but one time he come down here."
"You ever go up there yourself?"
"Cabbage always go hisself."
"Think you'd recognize this guy if I ever brought down a picture?"
"Ain't too many faces like that, man. Plus he short." Reg held up a hand to indicate mid-chest level on himself.
The waitress approached with two large boxed pizzas. "Okay, Reg, let's go take your friends some dinner, and then we'll go visit your grandpa."
***
John dragged into the squad room the next morning with a splitting headache. He'd had a choice: drive back in the wee hours, or stay over with Ma, and he'd reasoned that he was more likely to be on time if he drove home that night.
Mike had a homeless guy in the interrogation room when he got in, so John had a few moments to think. To write up his trip yesterday, or not to write it up? And then he thought, Write up what? He'd learned a lot about Clay, but he had no more reason to suspect him in the Pride shooting than he'd had yesterday.
But he wasn't about to abandon this yet.
The phone rang; John picked up.
"Homicide," he said.
The clerk downstairs said, "I've got a phone call for Detective Robin."
"This is Detective Robin."
"Caller said he has a tip on a case you're working on and wants to talk to you directly."
"You got a name?" John reached around to pull his jacket off the back of his chair; his notebook was in the inside pocket.
"The caller wouldn't give his name, sir."
"Okay, thanks."
John heard a click and said, "This is Detective Robin."
A male voice whispered, "Meet me at Siné at eight p.m., Detective. Did you get that?"
Mike emerged from the interrogation room and headed for the coffee bar. He looked over at John and raised his eyebrows, and John motioned to him to pick up and listen in.
"Could you say that a little louder, sir? Why are you whispering?"
"There's some things you need to know about your dead sergeant. Siné. Eight p.m."
The line went dead.
***
John stared into a cup of cold black coffee and checked his watch. Nine fifteen. No breeze blew across Siné's outdoor patio, and he sat sweltering in his summer blazer outside the Irish pub. Night offered no relief from River City summer weather.
Mike blended with the dinner crowd a few tables up. Savonn sat indoors where he could see John, the entrance, and the stairs to the lower level. He glanced back through the window at John with a just-checked shrug.
John looked out beyond the patio, where cars rumbled by on a cobblestone street. Downtown's Shockoe Slip was busy on Friday nights. College-age couples sauntered past. Thirty-something girlfriends, laughing as they swung their purses, clipped by on their high heels.
After a "cut" signal from Savonn, John pulled out the tiny listening devices they'd installed in the booth, and the squad regrouped on the side street. Arlene came jogging up from her post a few doors down.
"Nobody came in alone the entire time," said Savonn.
"Probably a prank," Mike said. "Some asshole looking to waste our time."
A street lamp buzzed overhead. The shouts and laughter of a group of rowdy young men drifted up the block.
"Afraid I got a piece of bad news for you guys," said Arlene. "You know I got held up getting here. Before I got out of the squad room, word came down about Pride. His blood's testing positive for OxyContin."
The words hit John as hard as a left hook. Arlene's eyes searched the three men's faces, reflecting confusion and sympathy in the dim streetlight. "Yeah, I know. I couldn't believe it, either. I called the lab because I thought I had the wrong report. I kept saying, 'Are you sure? Are you sure?'"
"Was there any residue in his stomach?" said John. "A second person probably met him riverside before the shooting. Maybe they made him take something before they shot him."
"They're running a hair sample, so ..." Arlene's voice trailed off, leaving four disconsolate detectives staring at one another.
"I don't know." Savonn wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. Hot out here."
John had parked in the lots off Dock Street behind a bar and the upscale furniture stores. Mike followed him.
"No way was he on drugs!" John growled. "I had dinner with him last week! If anything had been different, I'd have known. He wasn't strung out on anything!"
"He did have that knee surgery a year ago." Mike, almost the same height as John but about thirty pounds heavier, broke into a slow jog to keep pace. "He would've had to take something then, wouldn't he?"
"Well, yeah, but he stopped that after two weeks. He didn't want to get hooked on that stuff." John whirled around on the edge of the parking lot. "I'm telling you, this has to be a mistake!"
Mike met his eyes. He reached out one hand for an awkward pat on John's shoulder. "We're gonna get to the bottom of this. You know we are."
John sighed and pinched the growing ache between his eyebrows. "It's like some fucking nightmare."
Mike's shoulders sagged. "I know. Try to get some sleep."
"You, too. I'll see you tomorrow." John turned to look for his car on the outside edge of the lot and took a few steps toward Dock Street.
Something hit him in the side hard enough to knock the wind out of him. The parked cars tilted at a forty-five degree angle and blinked to black. His feet stumbled to the right, numb as blocks of wood. Then the pain started, like a white-hot poker thrust straight through him. He clutched at his stomach as a wave of nausea sent sour bile into his mouth.
The bitter-smelling asphalt drove biting pebbles into his shoulder, and something hit him in the head. A strobe light flashed in his eyes.
A hoarse shout pierced his ears. The last thing he heard was Mike's anxious voice: "Johnny? Johnny!" before his world winked completely out.
He jolted awake in strobe-light flashes and ebbed out on receding tides of pain. The jerk and sway as the gurney rose, a metallic thump. Cold clamminess of a mask over his face. His entire right side burned like fire.
Motion. A screaming sound overhead. A huge round moon floating past the ambulance window, a dead tree outside spreading its branches like great cracks across the silver. As if the moon could break apart into chunks.
Someone's head blocked the moonlight. "Detective Robin, can you hear me? We're taking you to the hospital."