“The question is, what you know?”

This was the moment that always came right before the biggest revelation. Above all things, Lighty was nosey, and before he dropped a significant bit of information on Mann, he wanted his curiosity satisfied. Mann knew he’d have to give Lighty an appetizer if he wanted to get the entrée. If he didn’t feed Lighty’s thirst for gossip, the flow of information would stop.

“I can’t give you a lot ‘cause it’s still under investigation,” Mann said. “But I can tell you he wasn’t from here.”

Lighty sat back, folded his arms and waited. He wanted to know more. He deserved that much after losing his leg for his country. God knows he’d gotten little else. He lived in a place that had come to life around him, while his home and his body died debilitating deaths. He slept with a woman who’d settled for him because his check came like clockwork on the first of the month. He served as the heartbeat for a community that too often saw young men’s hearts stopped cold. He lived vicariously through the people around him, and that was what got him through the day, so if he asked for a bit of information here and there, the least Mann could do was oblige him.

“If I tell you this,” Mann said impatiently, “you can’t tell other people.”

“I won’t,” Lighty said, leaning forward on the couch.

“The guy was from North Dakota and he was twenty-five,” Mann said. “We don’t think he worked alone and we don’t think it’s over, so if you got somethin’ else, I need it now. I can’t wait.”

“You think they’ll kill some more people?” Lighty asked.

“I don’t know, but I know the longer I sit here the harder it’ll be to catch ’em if they do.”

Lighty wasn’t one to play games with death. He’d seen it up close too many times and knew it better than he knew himself. He was keenly aware of the fact that death never hurt those who experienced it. Death only devastated those who were left behind.

“He was messin’ with a girl named Desiree, Desi for short,” Lighty said. “She live on Twenty-fifth Street, on the corner ’cross the street from the church on the avenue.”

“Don’t waste my time, Lighty,” Mann warned. “If I can get what she know somewhere else, I don’t need to talk to her.”

Lighty chuckled. “Unless you ’bout to go out to Fargo and find the boy’s mother, you won’t find nobody that know more about him than Desi.”

“How do you know?” Mann asked.

Lighty looked Mann in the eye. “She carryin’ his baby.”

Charlie Mann tried calling Coletti right before he reached the house at Twenty-fifth and Cecil B. Moore, but the old man’s cell phone just rang.