A tall white guy with short dark hair, glasses, and a pencil-thin mustache, who was kneeling over the facedown body of a man a few steps away from the curb, glanced our way and got to his feet. He and Lawrence approached each other with an uncomfortable familiarity, like they knew each other but weren’t friends. Still, I thought maybe Lawrence would extend a hand, but he didn’t, and this Trimble guy didn’t either.

“When he got hit,” Trimble said, “at least it didn’t break his cell phone. When we heard it ringing inside his jacket, I grabbed it. What was he doing here?”

Lawrence looked over at the dead body of Miles Diamond. “He and I were watching different stores, thinking they might get hit. I guess his did.”

Trimble pursed his lips, nodded. “You friends?”

“We each threw each other a bit of work. He was a good guy. He’s got a wife.”

“I’ve seen her,” Trimble said, grinning. “He was a lucky guy till now. Who’s this?” he asked, tilting his head toward me.

“Zack Walker. He writes for The Metropolitan.”

“Hi,” I said. Trimble glared at me briefly, then said to Lawrence, “What’s he doing, a piece on guys who couldn’t hack it on the force?”

Lawrence ran his hand over his mouth, like he was going to have to physically keep his comments to himself. He slipped his hand into his pocket and said, “Do you know what happened here, Steve?”

“Mr. Diamond appears to be the victim of a hit-and-run. We got a witness, guy walking his dog, about a block away, said this black SUV was backing out of Maxwell’s here after taking out the front of the store, and squashed our guy here. He must have got out of his car—that’s it parked over there—I don’t know, but he woulda been better off staying put.”

“So they ran him down,” Lawrence said. A vein I’d not noticed before was pulsing at the side of his head.

Trimble shook his head slowly. “Not sure. The dog walker, he said Miles was behind the SUV, one of those big tall ones, you know, and he was so short, they just might not have seen him when they were backing up. These SUVs, they should all go beep-beep when they back up, like trucks, you know?”

Chapter 3

3

My daughter Angie was at the kitchen table, ignoring the buttered toast I’d put in front of her and fiddling with one of her nails instead, when her cell phone started chirping. She dug it out of her purse, looked at the display, and said, “Shit, my stalker.”