Free Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman Page A

“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.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    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