The Manhattan Caballero was buried in a street of red stone buildings, a small place, its name and logo painted on one window, a beer sign in the other.
"They shot from up there, the third window in, second floor," Lily said, standing on the sidewalk outside the Caballero door, pointing across the street.
"Couldn't miss with a laser sight," Lucas said, looking up at the window, then down at the sidewalk. "He must've been about right here, you see the chip marks."
Caught by the geometry and technicalities of the killing, he'd paid no attention to her. Now he looked up and she had one hand on the restaurant window, as if for support, her face pale, waxen.
"Jesus, I'm sorry…"
"I'm okay," she said.
"I thought you were gonna faint."
"It's anger now," she said. "When I think about Walt, I want to kill somebody."
"That bad?"
"So bad I can't believe it. It's like I lost a kid."
They flagged a cab to go to Petty's apartment. Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Lily asked, "Have you ever been here? Brooklyn Heights?"
"No."
"Great place for an apartment. I thought about it, I would've come, except, you know, once you live in the Village, you don't want to leave."
"This looks okay…" Lucas said, peering out the window as they rolled off the end of the bridge. "The woman at Petty's apartment building…"
"Logan."
"She says somebody was in his apartment when he was already dead, and before the cops arrived?"
"Yes. Absolutely. She remembers that she thought he'd come home and then gone out again. She was watching television, remembered the show, and what part of the show. We checked-he'd been dead for ten minutes."
"Somebody was moving fast."
"Very fast. Had to know the minute Walt went down. Had to be waiting for it. There's a question about how he got into Walt's apartment. Whoever it was must have had a key."
"That's simple enough, if you're talking about an intelligence operation."
"You should know," she said.
Petty's apartment was in a brown brick building stuck on the side of a low hill, in a cul-de-sac, the area long faded but pleasant. Marcy Logan's door was the first one to the left, inside the tiny lobby.
"Very late," Logan said, peering over the door chain at Lily's badge. She was an older woman, in her middle sixties, gray hair and matching eyes. "You said ten o'clock."
"I'm sorry, but something else came up," Lily said. "We just need to talk for a minute."
"Well, come in." Her tone was severe, but Lucas got the impression that Logan was happy for the company. "I'll have to warm up the coffee…"
She had made cookies and coffee, the cookies laid out on a silver tray. She stuck a carafe of coffee in a microwave, fussed with cups and saucers.
"Such a nice apartment," Lily said.
"Thank you. They filmed Moonstruck just down the way, you know. Cher was right down by the Promenade, I saw her…"
When the coffee was hot, Logan poked the tray of cookies in Lucas' face. Lucas tried one: oatmeal. He took another, with a cup of coffee.
"It wasn't a woman," Logan said, positively, when Lily asked. "The footsteps were too heavy. I didn't see him, but it was a man."
"You're sure?"
"I hear people come and go all day," Logan said. "That's something I'd know. I thought it was Walter coming back-I wouldn't have thought that if it was a woman."
"He went up, was there for a few minutes, then came right back down?" Lily asked.
"That's right. Couldn't have been more than a half-hour, because my show was a half-hour, and he came after the show started and left before it ended."
"You told the investigators that it occurred to you that it wasn't Petty," Lily said. "But not seriously enough that you actually looked. Why did you think it might not be him?"
"Whoever it was, stopped in the lobby. Like he was looking at my apartment door or maybe listening for anybody inside. Then he went up. Walter was always very forthright. Walked right in, went right up. Especially on his Fridays. He'd always have two or three beers, and he couldn't hold it at all, and by the time he got here, he'd… you know: he had to go. You could hear the water running from the toilet, right after he went up. That night, though, whoever it was stopped inside. He did the same thing on the way back out. Stopped in the lobby. It gives me the shivers. Maybe he was thinking about rubbing out witnesses."
"I don't think that's much of a threat," Lily said, smiling at the "rubbing out."
"Why don't you say something, young man?" Logan asked Lucas, who was eating his sixth cookie. He couldn't seem to stop.
"Too busy eating cookies," he said. "These things are great. You could make a fortune selling them."
"Oh, that's nice," she said, smiling. "What happened to your face?"
"I was mugged."
"Isn't that just like New York? Even the cops…"
"How do you know this guy went to Petty's apartment?" Lucas asked.
"Well, I heard him come in, and then the elevator dinged, so he was going up. Then just a second later, I heard another ding, like it was coming from the kitchen. That's the second floor. If it goes to the third floor, I can barely hear it. If it goes to the fourth, I can't hear it at all."
"Okay," Lucas said, nodding. "So you heard it ding on the second floor."
"Yes. And the Lynns and Golds were already in and the Schumachers were at Fire Island that whole weekend. So it had to be Walter, and it was about the time he always came in. I didn't hear him flush, though. Then I heard the elevator ding on the second floor again, and it came down. Then whoever it was, I thought was looking at apartments again, because it was a minute before the outside door opened… I should have looked, but I was watching my show."
"That's fine," said Lucas, nodding. "And it wasn't a visitor to one of the other apartments?"
"No," Logan said, shaking her head. "When the cops got here and I found out what happened, I told them about somebody coming, and they talked to everybody up there. Nobody came in at that time, and nobody had any visitors."
When they finished with Logan, they rode up in the elevator and Lily cut the seals off Petty's door. The apartment had been neatly kept but had been pulled apart by investigators. The refrigerator had been unplugged, and the door stood open. Cupboard doors were open and paper was stacked everywhere. Lucas went to Petty's desk, which was set in a tiny alcove, and thumbed through financial records… No personal phone book.
"No phone book."
"The Homicide guys probably have it. I'll ask."
Ten minutes later, Lily said, "This is like the interview with Rich. There isn't anything here."
On the way out, Mrs. Logan met them in the hallway with a brown paper bag, which she handed to Lucas. "More cookies," she said.
"Thanks," he said, and then, "When I finish them, I may come back for more."
The old lady giggled, and Lucas and Lily went looking for a cab. • • • Cornell Reed. Cornell Reed had seen the killer, an old white guy, and recognized him as a cop.
Lucas lay on the hotel bed and thought about it, sighed, rolled off the bed, found his pocket address book, and picked out Harmon Anderson's home phone number. As he dialed the number, he glanced at his watch. It would be midnight, Minneapolis time.
Anderson was in bed.
"Jesus, Lucas, what's going on?"
"I'm in New York…"
"I know, I heard. I wish I was there…" Lucas heard him turn away from the phone and say to someone in the background, "Lucas." Then to Lucas, he said, "My wife's here, she says hello."
"Look, I'm sorry I woke you up…"
"No, no…"
"And I don't want to cause you any problems, but would you be available to do a little computer work? I'd pay you a consultant's fee."
"Ah, fuck that, what do you need?"
"I'm in a snakepit, man. Could you find out what airlines fly out of New York, all the big airports, including Newark, and check from the beginning of the month, see if there's a ticket for a Cornell Reed? Or any first name Cornell, if you can do that? Or Red Reed? I don't think it'd be overseas, except maybe the Caribbean. Check domestic first, like Atlanta, L.A. or Chicago. I need to know where he went and I need to know who paid for the ticket, if we can find that out."