Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

She bit her lip. “I—don’t know. I just—like—what kind of questions?”

“I just need to know a few things about Hector’s posse.”

Lin shook her head hard. “I don’t—that’s not like a very good idea.”

“Why not?”

She hesitated and looked around out of the corner of her eyes.

“Lin, I’d like to try to find out who killed Hector. I can’t do that until I know a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like were any of the posse not there when Hector was shot?”

She frowned, an incredibly elegant expression on her. “Why would you want to know that?”

“Because Hector was set up. So somebody had to set him up. So whoever set him up might not be there because they knew it was a setup.” If she looked like Roseanne Arnold I probably wouldn’t have been so patient. But she didn’t look like Roseanne, not by two hundred pounds and a few yards of creamy skin. “So was anybody missing?”

She shook her head. “Just Spider. The guy that, you know.” She nodded slightly at my forehead. “But that wasn’t—he had to, like, go to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“He like fell off the roof? And was busted up for a couple of weeks. So it couldn’t have been Spider.”

“When did he fall from the roof?”

Lin raised one shoulder in a graceful shrug. The collar of her blouse opened slightly and I fought not to look. “It was like almost the same time. He rode the ambulance they brought for Hector.”

I nodded. “I need to talk to him.”

Lin hissed. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

She raised a hand. I watched it flutter for a moment like a small lost bird, then it dropped. “He hasn’t been—you know. Since Hector got shot, Spider has been kind of wild? Like, not a real good person to bother? I mean—” And she nodded at my forehead again.

“I’d still like to talk to him, Lin. It might be important.”

She shook her head again, but it didn’t mean no this time. It was just something to do while she was thinking about it. So I pushed. “Can you get him here?”

She smiled, a very old and very feminine smile. “Oh, I can get him to come here. If I ask him, Spider will come. That’s not the problem.”

“What is the problem?”

She bit her lip and looked away.

“What do you think Hector would want you to do?” It was shameless and probably wouldn’t have worked on anybody but a sixteen-year-old. But it worked on her, or something did.

She looked carefully up and down the street. “I’ll call him,” she said. “But be real careful, okay? Meet me on the roof in like ten minutes?” And she was gone into the store.

I looked up and down the street and didn’t see anything. Of course, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. But at least I didn’t see it.

Lin was acting more like somebody stuck in a moral dilemma than somebody afraid. I thought she might be tough to scare. So I guessed she wanted to make sure nobody saw her talking with the enemy.

I walked down the alley between the bank and the grocery store. Park’s dumpster was there. It stank, but it was neat. Enigmatic, too.

Around back I pulled on the tattered rope and climbed the stairs to the roof. I walked across the gravel and tar and stood looking down into the street.