Free Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman

in the same phrase. As Klaus had once said of Aaron, he was more a fugue than a frug kind of guy.
    “Sorry,” I said. “But I took a few days off.”
    His face lit up. “You’re working a case! But what are you doing here ?”

    “Kenny Burton.”
    “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”
    “We used to work together when I started out as a cop. Now he works for a private security firm that has a contract with the Marshal Service over at the Federal Courthouse on Centre Street. I’m going over there to talk to him in a little while.”
    “So, you’re killing time.”
    “Couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather kill it with.”
    “Yet another sad commentary on your life.”
    “Fuck you, Klaus!”
    “Ah,” he said. “There’s the Moe I know and love.”
     
    TEN YEARS MY elder, Kenny Burton had the old-cop look, somehow grizzled and clean-shaven all at once. Except for my recent phone call, we hadn’t spoken or seen each other in many years, but I was unlikely to miss him. Everything about him, from his get-the-fuck-outta-my-way strut to the you-don’t-want-a-piece-of-me manner with which he blew cigarette smoke into the faces of oncoming pedestrians, screamed asshole. Or maybe I saw that in him because I knew him a little bit from when I had started on the job in the late ’60s.
    Priding himself on things most other cops would hide like a crazy aunt, Kenny Burton was a brutal, thick-skulled prick who was trained in the ways of pre-Knapp Commission, pre-Miranda Rights policing. He never paid for a meal, a cup of coffee, or a blow job until word came down from on high. He never arrested anyone who wasn’t guilty or didn’t deserve to have the crap beat out of them. His motto might well have been: Why use your head when you can use your fists instead?
    “Caveman Kenny Burton, is that you?” I said, walking up to him outside the courthouse. He flicked a still-burning cigarette at the open window of a waiting cab. The cigarette barely missed, bouncing harmlessly off the cab’s door.
    “Who wants to know?”
    “Moe Prager wants to know.”
    Burton grunted, one corner of his mouth turning up. From him this was a hug and a kiss on the lips. “What you doing around here?”
    “Waiting for you. Can I buy you a drink?”
    “Sure. There’s O’Hearn’s on Church.”

    O’Hearn’s was your basic New York version of an Irish pub. What did that mean? It meant it was just like any other shithole bar in the city, only with cardboard shamrocks on the walls in mid-March and the occasional barman who understood that hurling had meaning beyond vomit.
    Burton’s malicious blue eyes pinned me to my chair as we sipped at our drinks. We were boxers staring across the ring before the bell for round one. He was doing the silent calculations. I could hear the gears churning nonetheless. The mistake people make about judging brutes is to assume they’re fools. Kenny Burton was no fool. We had never been close, even during the few years we served together. Larry Mac, on the other hand, always considered Kenny a pal. Only after I’d come to know Larry well did I figure out that odd coupling. Kenny Burton appealed to Larry’s ambition, not his heart. Ambitious men are like baseball scouts—they can spot everyone’s special talent and how that talent can serve them. Frankly, I didn’t want to know how Caveman had served Larry’s ambition.
    “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.