Vinny McCabe's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Vinny walked three blocks to the phone booth on Seventh, the same one he'd used twice before when someone didn't want to be traced. The receiver was cold when he picked it up. It rang four times before the witness answered. The voice was thin, shaky. A man. He'd seen someone leave the loading dock at ten-thirty, he said, just like the police report noted. But when detectives came to follow up, they asked three questions and left. Never wrote down his answers. Never asked him to come in. Vinny asked where he was now. The man went silent for eight seconds. Then he gave an address—a boarding house near the rails, the kind with a single lamp over the door and rent paid in cash. Vinny said he'd be there in twenty minutes. The man said to come alone, then hung up. Vinny replaced the receiver and turned toward the street. The address placed the witness two blocks from the warehouse. Close enough to see. Close enough to be seen. He started walking, knowing that if someone wanted this man quiet, they already knew where he was. The question was whether Vinny would get there first. When he reached the boarding house, the door stood half open. The lamp above it flickered once, then stayed lit. Vinny stepped into the doorway and listened. No footsteps. No voices. Just the smell of old wood and cigarette smoke. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and found the room number the man had given him. The door was unlocked. Inside, the witness sat on the edge of a narrow bed, hands folded, staring at the floor. He looked up when Vinny entered. His face was pale, eyes red. He said he'd been waiting two weeks for someone to ask the right questions. Vinny pulled out his notebook and sat down. The man told him everything—the figure in the dark coat leaving at ten-thirty, the same figure he'd seen twice before that month, always at the same time, always through the loading dock. He'd told the police. They wrote nothing down. Vinny asked if he remembered anything else. The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper—a phone number, written in pencil. He said the figure had dropped it near the dock three nights before the death. Vinny took the paper and folded it into his notebook. He asked if anyone had come looking for him since. The man nodded. Yesterday, he said. Someone knocked, asked his name, then left without another word. Vinny stood and told him to stay inside, keep the door locked, and call if anyone came back. The man asked if Vinny thought he was in danger. Vinny looked at him and said nothing. Then he left, closing the door behind him. Outside, he studied the phone number under the streetlight. It was local. He'd seen the prefix before, somewhere in his wife's file. He couldn't place it yet, but it would come. He walked back toward his office, the scrap of paper in his pocket, knowing he'd just moved one step closer to the answer and made himself visible doing it.