Last Call

"Lucky for you, I'm a nice guy," said the guard. "I'm go

"Is that so?" said Theo, grunting through the pain.

"Yeah. Looks like your buddy Moses killed a state trooper tonight. Shot him right in the face."

Theo said nothing. Somehow, it didn't surprise him.

MacDonald said, "You and me are go

"What're you talkin' about?"

"I kept my eye on you and Moses. I saw your buddy-buddy act in the cafeteria. I watched you two scheming in the stairwell."

"Just jail talk, man."

"My ass," said MacDonald. "Moses blew this county five minutes after he was released. Got in his car and headed north. Police got a BOLO out, but nobody knows where he is now."

Theo's fingers were going numb, which lessened the pain. "Can't help you, dude."

"Yeah, you can. I think you know exactly where Moses was headed when he sot out of TGK."

"I don't know nothin'."

MacDonald raised his boot off Theo's fingers and gave him a kick to the kidney. This time, Theo couldn't stop from crying out in pain. He couldn't tell anyone about his undercover status – the deal was that he would take whatever came, like a regular inmate – but he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up.

And even if he told him, MacDonald wouldn't believe him now.

The guard knelt at Theo's side and whispered in his ear, his voice taking on the perverse and gleeful edge of a sadist: "I got all night, tough guy. We'll see exactly what you know."

Chapter 31

Uncle Cy couldn't sleep.

Lightheadedness had forced him to leave the bar early tonight. It had come on right after Jack called to tell him that a guy named Moses had an O-Town Posse tattoo and killed a state trooper just hours after his release from TGK. Distressing news, but it didn't account for Cy's dizziness. That damn doctor still didn't have his blood pressure medication right. Cy went home and climbed into bed. It felt like the bad old days when he would drag himself home from his gigs, fall onto the bed or sometimes even the floor, and fight with the spins as he tried to find sleep.

Fu

Except that her death really wasn't the end of anything – especially not now, with Isaac Reems's promise hanging out there for Theo to grasp.

Cy sat up in the darkened bedroom and draped his legs over the edge of the mattress. Things were spi

A LOUD POUNDING ON the front door woke Cy from a deep sleep. It took him a moment to recognize his surroundings. Not his bedroom. It was the living room. He'd passed out on the couch this time. That was one way for a man of so much talent to cope with playing a hellhole like Homeboy's.

More pounding on the door. He forced himself up and shuffled across the room. The morning sun assaulted his eyes the moment he opened the door.

"Cyrus Knight?" the man on the porch said.

His head was throbbing, and the cotton mouth was so bad that Cy could barely form words. "What of it?" he said.

The man flashed a badge, as did the younger guy with him. They introduced themselves as Harmon and Kittle, homicide detectives. Harmon was clearly the veteran, teeth stained from years of addiction to coffee and tobacco, his face creased with the lines of too many crimes, solved and unsolved. Kittle looked too young to be a detective, still battling acne and his hair buzzed like a high-school jock.

Harmon said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions about your niece."

Cy scratched his head and cleared his throat. The blinding glare of the sun forced him to keep one eye closed. "It's about damn time you guys come around," he said. "Come in."

"That won't be necessary," said Harmon.

Cy glanced inside his messy apartment, then back at the detectives. A couple of white guys in an all-black neighborhood. "What's the matter? My place ain't good enough for ya'?"

"Seen worse," said Harmon. "This will just take a couple minutes."

"Couple of minutes? This isn't jaywalking. A woman was murdered."

"How can you be so sure it was murder?" the younger detective asked suspiciously.

Detective Harmon rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Rookies." "Kittle, the woman's throat was slit. Let me handle this."

Cy was sobering up quickly. It was clear that the homicide division hadn't put its best and brightest on this case. He directed his question to Harmon. "What do you want to know?"

Harmon pulled a pen and small notepad from his breast pocket. "When's the last time you saw your niece alive?"

Cy thought about it. "Sometime that same day she was killed. I play the sax at Homeboy's. She… she sort of hangs there."

"What do you mean 'hangs'?"

"Hangs… you know. It's her spot."

The detectives exchanged glances. Kittle smirked. Harmon said, "Did your niece have a job?"

"She, you know, made money as she could."

Kittle said, "We hear she was a prostitute."

Cy shrugged. "Might have been."

Harmon asked, "How well did you know her?"

"Better than most folks."

"And you can't tell us what your niece did for a living?"

"She's got kids, okay? Two boys. Good kids – well, one of 'em is, anyway. I just don't see why you gotta write all this stuff down and put it in the damn newspaper" 'We're detectives, not reporters." 'It's all the same club." 'Sir, I just need the facts," said Harmon. 'Okay, she walked the street. Big deal." Harmon was deadpan. "She have a pimp?" 'Beats me." 'She do drugs?" 'What do you think?"

"Know anybody who'd want her dead?" said Harmon. 'Not really."

Harmon made a quick entry in his notebook and tucked it back into his pocket. "Thanks very much for your time, Mr. Knight."

"That's it?"

He gave Cy a business card. "Call me if anything comes to mind. Anything at all that you might think is important." The detectives turned and started down the steps. "Hey," said Cy.

The detectives stopped, but only Harmon looked back. Cy said, "You ain't go

Harmon paused, as if to consider his response. It hardly seemed possible, but Cy would have sworn that the old detective looked even more jaded than when he'd arrived.

"Another black whore gets high on crack and picks the wrong john," he said. "I'll do my best. But we can't work miracles, pal."

THE BEDROOM SUDDENLY stopped spi