Eyes of Prey Read Online Free PDF Page A

much . . . .”
    Lucas thought it over again. A gust of rain brought a quick, furious drumming on the window, which just as quickly stopped. A woman with a red golf umbrella went by.
    “Listen,” Del said. “I’m not just sitting here bullshitting . . . . I was hoping you’d take a look at it.”
    “Ah, man . . . I hate murders. And I haven’t been operating so good . . . .” Lucas gestured helplessly.
    “That’s another thing. You need an interesting case,” Del said, poking an index finger at Lucas’ face. “You’re more fucked up than I am, and I’m a goddamned train wreck.”
    “Thanks . . .” Lucas opened his mouth to ask another question, but two pedestrians were drifting along the length ofthe window. One was a very light-skinned black woman, with a tan trench coat and a wide-brimmed cotton hat that matched the coat. The other was a tall, cadaverous white boy wearing a narrow-brimmed alpine hat with a small feather.
    Lucas sat up. “Randy.”
    Del looked out at the street, then reached across the table and took Lucas’ arm and said, “Take it easy, huh?”
    “She was my best snitch, man,” Lucas said, in a voice like a gravel road. “She was almost a friend.”
    “Bullfuck. Take it easy.”
    “Let him get all the way inside . . . . You go first, cover me, he knows my face . . . .”
    Randy came in first, his hands in his coat pockets. He posed for a moment, but nobody noticed. With twelve seconds left in the NBA game, the Celtics were one point down with a man at the line, shooting two. Everybody but the drunk hooker and the bitter old man who was talking into his overcoat was facing the tube.
    A woman came in behind Randy and pulled the door shut.
    Lucas came out of the booth a step behind Del. She’s beautiful, he thought, looking at the woman past Del’s shoulder; then he put his head down. Why would she hang with a dipshit like Randy?
    Randy Whitcomb was seventeen and a fancy man, with a gun and a knife and sometimes a blackthorn walking stick with a gold knob on the end of it. He had a long freckled face, coarse red hair and two middle teeth that pointed in slightly different directions. He shook himself like a dog, flicking water spray off his tweed coat. He was too young for a tweed coat and too thin and too crazy for the quality of it. He walked down the bar toward the drunk hooker, stopped, posed again, waiting to be seen. The hooker didn’t look up until he took a hand out of his coat and slid a church key down the bar, where it knocked a couple of quarters off her stack of change.
    “Marie,” Randy crooned. The bartender caught the tone and looked at him. Del and Lucas were closing, but Randy paid them no attention. He was focused on Marie like fire: “Marie, baby,” he warbled. “I hear you been talking to the cops . . . .”
    Marie tried to climb off the stool, looking around wildly for Lucas. The stool tipped backward and she reached out to catch herself on the bar, teetering. Randy slid around the corner of the bar, going for her, but Lucas was there, behind him. He put a hand in the middle of the boy’s back and pushed him, hard, into the bar.
    The bartender hollered, “Hey,” and Del had his badge out as Marie hit the floor, her glass shattering.
    “Police. Everybody sit still,” Del shouted. He slipped a short black revolver out of a hip holster and held it vertically in front of his face, where everybody in the bar could see it.
    “Randy Ernest Whitcomb, dickweed,” Lucas began, pushing Randy in the center of his back, looping his foot in front of the boy’s ankles. “You are under . . .”
    He had Randy leaning forward, his feet back, one arm held tight, the other going into his pocket for cuffs, when Randy screamed, “No,” and levered himself belly-down onto the bar.
    Lucas grabbed for one of his legs, but Randy kicked, thrashed. One foot caught Lucas on the side of the face, a glancing impact, but it hurt and knocked him