Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

He switched feet. The pebble rolled out of reach. “What’s gonna happen to me?”

I was pretty sure I knew what that meant. “She doesn’t have to know. That’s up to you. But I have to know. And you might have to tell the cops. Maybe identify a picture.”

He shook his head and looked for another pebble.

“He’s dead, Spider. You can’t bring him back. But you can help get the guy that killed him.”

A tear rolled off his face and slapped the roof. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.” Another tear landed by the first one. “I didn’t mean for him to die like that.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “White guy,” he said, still looking down.

“A white guy killed Hector?”

“Yeah.”

“Who was he?”

“Dunno.” The new pebble rolled over beside the old one.

It took some work and a lot of patience, but I finally got the whole thing from him.

A white guy had approached him the morning of the shooting. He said he was a reporter and had seen Spider with Hector when the posse was facing down a mob. Spider remembered seeing a car, heavily tinted windows, white face inside. It was the reporter.

Did Spider want to be on TV? Spider did. Spider was in love with Lin Park, but she couldn’t see anyone but Hector. Spider was just one of the posse. But if this reporter put him on TV, explaining what was going on, making it sound like Spider was maybe a little more important…

Anyway, Spider had agreed to get Hector to show up. He had even suggested Park’s store as the place. The plan was for Spider to stay on the roof with the cameraman and talk about what was happening. He’d be the star.

The reporter was already there when Spider climbed up onto the roof. But that was not a camera he was holding.

It was a gun.

Spider ran to stop him. The white guy just smiled and picked him up like a rag doll and threw him off the roof. Just threw him like he didn’t weigh anything at all, with one hand.

The guy hadn’t even looked. Spider landed in Park’s dumpster on top of some spoiled produce. He’d broken a leg and an arm, two ribs, like that, instead of getting killed. Been in the hospital for a week.

But the last thing he saw before he crawled away down the alley was that white guy. He was going hand-over-hand up a rope to the roof of the bank next door. Hand-over-hand, like on a jungle gym. Fast, smooth, making it look as easy as walking.

Spider sniffled like a scared kid, and maybe that’s all he was. “I close my eyes I still see that,” he said. “That great big white motherfucker zooming across that rope like Spiderman. And I’m just lying in the goddamn garbage.”

At least that explained the brummel hook. The killer had retreated across the rooftops and got away.

I looked at Spider. He had collapsed into himself. All the swagger and toughness were gone. He looked like a small, lost kid.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

The look he gave me was haunted, pure misery. “What’s that make me look like? I’

m either a punk or a chump. Ain’t no choice.”

His face was old, ravaged, but the kid he was showed in the eyes. Just a scared, miserable, guilty kid with no idea how to do what was right, and it was eating him up.

He looked down again, not even bothering to kick at pebbles.

“You didn’t kill him, Spider. This other guy killed him. And you’re going to help me catch him.”

He said nothing. He was crying again.