“Notice the cops on your way up here?” Knee High would always ask him.

“Was nothing but,” the guy would always answer with a smile. It made Knee High feel better, knowing his new friends in blue were present in such numbers.

Delivery guy would hand over the takeout, and Knee High would give him three ten-dollar bills even though the check was always for eighteen dollars. Guy would always tell him gracias and give him a big smile. Knee High would smile back, just for the human contact. He was a people person, had always loved being around people.

In anticipation, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and got out three tens, slipped them folded over in his shirt pocket so he’d be ready for the delivery guy. Returned wallet to pocket.

His heart was hammering and he stood still, breathing deeply. This was getting to him, knowing the Justice mother was out there wanting to kill him. True, he had security, NYPD style, but security could only go so far. That Dudman guy, he’d had professional bodyguards, and Justice still got to him, shot him dead as John Lennon.

Dead as Cold Cat.

That whole thing was Edie’s fault. Nobody should ever trust that kind of bitch. Knee High knew now, when it was too late, that he’d made a horrible mistake. But damn! she was fine-looking that day she’d come to him and lifted her blouse, gave him a wide smile, and asked if he’d help her with the clasp on her brassiere. When she’d turned around, he saw her brassiere was fastened and told her so. She said she wanted him to help her unfasten it, then leaned back against him and kind of rubbed herself against him, rotating that tight little rump.

That had been it for Knee High. Whew! Woman like that…

The intercom buzzed, jolting Knee High out of his thoughts.

He went over and pressed the button, asked who was downstairs.

“Great Wall,” came the answer. Not the doorman, or the cop who was pretending to be the doorman, but a familiar voice. Hispanic guy.

Knee High buzzed him into the building.

In less than half a minute there was a knock on the door. Egg foo yung on his mind, Knee High absently reached into his pocket for the three tens as he worked the dead bolt then jingle-jangled the chain lock with his free hand and opened the door.

“You fast tonight,” he said.

And was shot between his widening eyes.

61

“Who found him?” Beam asked.

“Delivery man with takeout from a restaurant a block over,” said the uniform who’d been first on the scene. He was a tall, thin man with a weathered face and the long fingers of a concert pianist. Beam had seen him around; his name was Alfonse something.

“That what’s all over the hall floor?” Beam asked.

“Yes, sir. Chinese.”

That explained the peculiar, pungent scent in the hall that Beam had noticed when he stepped out of the elevator.

That, the aftermath of gunfire, and what was left of the back of Knee High’s head.

Beam had almost stepped on the food mess when he’d first approached the apartment’s open door. His gaze had been fixed on Knee High lying on his back just beyond the doorway, staring up at the ceiling in something like wonderment at having obtained a third round, dark eye just above the bridge of his nose. On his very still chest lay a neatly cut out red cloth letter J.

The crime scene unit had arrived shortly before Beam and was crawling all over the apartment beyond the body. The halls were quiet, guarded now by men and women in blue and made off limits except for tenants. On a small, ornate iron bench halfway to the elevators, next to a brass ashtray and a stalwart looking uniform standing with his arms crossed, sat a glum Hispanic man in his thirties. He had on jeans and a white shirt, worn down Nikes, and was wearing a white baseball cap lettered GW. His arms were heavily tattooed.

“Delivery man?” Beam asked Alfonse.

“Him. Says his name’s Raymond Carerra.”

Beam walked toward the man, who kept his head bowed and refused to acknowledge that anyone was approaching. Beam saw that the tattoos were mostly of snakes and flowers. “Raymond?”

Carerra nodded without looking up at him. Beam thought he appeared a little sick to his stomach. He showed Carerra his shield and introduced himself as police.

“I already told what happened,” Carerra said, with a slight Spanish accent.

“You watch TV, Raymond. You know I need to hear it again.”

“I did nothing but come here as usual and deliver Mr. Knee High’s egg foo yung.”

“From?”

“Great Wall. Place where I work just a block away. Mr. Knee High’s regular order.”

“That all he ever orders, egg foo yung?”

“Always, that’s all. Because ours is very good.”

Beam didn’t know whether Raymond was being a smart ass, so he let it pass. He got out his notepad and pen. “So tell me how it went, Raymond.”

“I came to deliver the food, got off the elevator, walked down the hall to that apartment, and that’s what I found. The door was open, and Mr. Knee High was laying there like that. I was so surprised I dropped my take-out boxes, then I got scared. At first I thought I might be in trouble and figured maybe I should get out fast. Then I remembered I was sent here by the restaurant, and I knew there were cops all over the building, guarding Mr. Knee High. Where was I gonna go?”

Raymond looked at Beam as if he might actually answer his question. Beam shrugged.

“I decided I’d go back downstairs,” Raymond said, “and find a cop, tell him what I saw, then come back up here with him.”

“Who’d you find?”

“That man.” Raymond pointed to Alfonse.

“Was the letter J already on Mr. Knee High’s chest?”

“Yes. Everything was just as it is now. Exactly.”

“There are some ten-dollar bills in his right hand.”

“They were there, to pay for the egg foo yung and my tip. Always the same amount. Mr. Knee High was a big tipper.”

“You call upstairs on the intercom before entering the main lobby?”

“Yes, sir. I said hello to the doorman, too. He told me go ahead and use the intercom instead of calling up himself and announcing me, like they sometimes do.”

Beam was surprised. The doorman was actually an undercover cop.

“Ever seen the doorman before?”

“Sure. Last three nights. Never before that. I been delivering to this building for two years. Doormen here, they come and go. Lots of picky tenants, I guess.”

So he was familiar to the cop-doorman, deemed safe.

Beam pointed toward the mess on the floor down the hall. “I see the egg foo yung that spilled on the carpet when you dropped the order, but what’s in that other, smaller box that didn’t open when it was dropped?

“That’s Mr. Knee High’s fortune cookie,” Raymond said. “I guess maybe I should have delivered that first, by itself.”

Beam decided Raymond was okay, a guy with a sense of humor poking through his apprehension. “Did you see anyone else down in the lobby, somebody who might have overheard what you were doing here, where you were going?”

“There was nobody else in the lobby. And I didn’t say into the intercom where I was going, just that I was here from Great Wall.”

“Was anyone else in the elevator?”

“No.”

“See anyone else in the halls?”

“No one. And I saw no one after I got in the elevator until I saw Mr. Knee High…like he is.”

Beam scribbled, then put away his notepad and clipped his pen back in his pocket.

“You guys aren’t gonna take me in, are you?” Raymond asked.

“Maybe, just to make a statement. Recorded, signed, that kind of thing. To make it official.” See if there are any contradictions.