Free Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem by Michael Koryta

Gradduk?” Joe asked Richards when I was done.
He shook his head. “No. They got the tip from the liquor store
owner, it seems. Not too surprising, considering those guys have
worked that neighborhood for years. They got hungry for a headline,
went in alone, and botched the arrest. Gradduk got away, and
then your partner saw how well it turned out.”
I willed away an image that came with sounds of squealing
brakes and crunching bone.
“Yeah,” I said. “I saw.”
Richards got to his feet, and this time he offered his hand to me.
“I owe you a shake. But take me seriously with this, and don’t get in
my way on this investigation.” He released my hand. “I forgot how
damn young you are. Have you even hit thirty yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m about to take a swing.”
He pursed his lips and whistled noiselessly. “You must have been
the youngest detective in department history.”
“No. But I was close.”
“Ever miss it?”
“Just pissing off the brass,” I said, and he almost smiled before
he left.
    It was harder for me to walk into the Hideaway this time. It had
given me a moment’s pause the night before, standing at the
threshold of a building filled with memories. But that night I’d
had a mission, and at its end was a chance to see an old friend. This
time I would walk out of here alone.
Only a handful of people were at the bar when I stepped
inside—two guys and three women, all of them smoking cigarettes
and drinking Budweiser. When I opened the door, I sent
sunlight spilling into the dark room, and everyone turned and
squinted at me, expecting a familiar face. Those were the faces you
saw most in the Hideaway, and that antiquated the place maybe
even more than the ancient building itself. The kid from my last
visit was behind the bar again, and Scott Draper was standing beside
him, talking softly over the counter with an older guy who
wore jeans and a silk shirt. I moved toward them, but before I got
to the bar, someone spoke from behind me.
“The hell you think you’re doing in here, prick.”
I turned to see an old man with an ugly scowl set on his fleshy
face sitting at one of the little tables across from the bar. He was
maybe sixty, with thick gray hair and red-rimmed eyes, and he was
staring at me like he wanted to break his beer bottle over my head.
“Good to see you, too, Bill,” I said.
“Kiss my ass.”
Bill Foulks had been in the neighborhood for every one of his
sixty-some years on the earth, and as far as I knew, he’d never left
for more than a week. He’d worked at one of the meat shops in the
West Side Market when I was a kid, and he’d been one of Norm
Gradduk’s closest friends.
“Somebody invite you here, asshole?” he said. “You haven’t had
the balls to hang around here since you busted Eddie, but now that
he’s dead you think it’s okay? Think something changed? Well,
nothing has. Get the hell out.”
I was opening my mouth to suggest Bill get his fat ass off the
stool to make it easier for me to throw him through the window
when Scott Draper stepped over.
“Give it a rest, Bill,” he said.
Foulks looked at him with wide eyes. “You shittin’ me, Scott?
This prick’s the guy—”
    “I know damn well who he is,” Draper said, his voice low and
cold, “and I don’t need to hear your opinion on him, either. Lincoln’s
here because I asked him to be.”
Foulks gaped at him in disgust. “You telling me you want the
son of a bitch down here?”
Draper wouldn’t look at me. “He’s here on business,” he told
Foulks, and then he motioned for me to follow him back into the
dining room. Foulks glared at me and showed me his fat middle
finger as I left.
I followed Draper into the dining room, which was empty. On
the wall all along this row of booths were pictures of the neighborhood
through the years. I was in one of them, standing with
Ed and Draper on the steps outside the bar the day we graduated
from high school, and I was pleasantly surprised to notice