Page 47 of Return of the Spider

I went over to their table, right hand inside my jacket, on thebutt of my weapon. Versace and his friend saw me and started to reach around their backs, low at the waist.

“That would be a bad idea,” I said in a soft voice, showing them my badge, which I held cupped in my hand to the side of my hip.

“A very bad idea,” Sampson said, equally low-key. He was standing beside me now, one hand on his service weapon, the other holding his badge in a way that only Prince and his guys could see. “Hands on the table, everyone. Mr. Prince, we just want to talk.”

“About?” he said, not looking at us.

“Why don’t you lose the shades and join us,” I said. “We’ll take just ten minutes of your time. And the box wine is on us.”

CHAPTER

35

“I’ll pass on thebox wine.” Prince sniffed, then nodded to his men, got up, and moved over to sit at our table. He took off his sunglasses, revealing hazel agate-like eyes that cut back and forth over us, and calmly folded his hands on the table. “What is it you want from me?”

“Information about Shay Mansion,” Sampson said.

Prince raised and lowered his shoulders slowly, his attention never leaving us, his calm demeanor and sharp gaze unchanged. “I do not know this name.”

“Sixteen-year-old kid,” I said. “Recruit to Los Lobos Rojos. Found wired to a tree in a park in Southeast DC. He’d been caned to death.”

The reputed gang leader winced, closed his eyes a second,then opened them and gazed at us unmoved once more. “How terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

Sampson said, “I don’t know. The son and grandson of Tonton Macoute members?”

Prince made a clicking noise and said in that same even, disarming tone, “I am hardly a secret policeman, Detective. But—how do you say it? The jury is out on you two.”

“We’re homicide detectives with Metro police,” I said.

“So you say. But who knows where your true allegiances lie.”

“They lie with the dead,” Sampson said, getting irritated.

“As they should,” Prince said. “But that has nothing to do with me.”

I said, “Or LMC Fifty-One?”

He did not react, just trained those odd hazel eyes on me, his expression serene, and yet somehow he broadcast a sense of deep, inner darkness that made me feel he was capable of unfathomable violence. Menace seemed to seep out of the man’s pores. I tried not to shiver.

“I run an import/export company,” Prince said finally. “We bring in Haitian cocoa and cane sugar, which we distribute to chocolate makers across North America. We try to send back whatever money we can to the markets in Haiti, and we make donations to many NGOs operating there.”

“So you’re really just a misunderstood humanitarian philanthropist,” Sampson said.

Prince smiled, revealing a gold canine on the lower left. “Now you’re beginning to understand my situation.”

I asked him where he’d been on the night of the murder.

He thought. “In bed. At home.”

“Can anybody confirm that?”

“The two women sleeping with me and my friends here, who were in the outer room,” Prince said. His men, who had been watching intently, nodded.

“We’d like names and phone numbers, please,” Sampson said.

Prince sighed. “Is that necessary?”

“It’s a murder investigation, so yes.”