Mercer frisked Luther from top to bottom and then led him back to the small room in which our conversation with Wilbur Gaskin had started. Luther’s jeans hung so low on his body that Mercer grabbed the waistband and hoisted them, startling the vacant-looking young man and probably pinching one of his testicles, from the sound of his squeal.

“Wassup with that?” Luther asked, trying to wrest himself away from Mercer.

“R-e-s-p-e-c-t. If the lady really wanted to see your ass, Luther, she’d probably invite you to drop your pants all the way.”

Mike was giving Grayson orders to search and cuff the two others and separate them for some initial questioning before taking them off to the 28th Precinct station house.

“What does your gut say, Detective?” Gaskin asked.

I had almost caught up to Mercer, but I paused to listen to Mike’s answer.

“Unlikely they’re involved. I haven’t been this lucky — or fast — catching a perp since my first domestic when the guy stabbed his wife to death with a carving knife in their bed then fell asleep next to her, waiting for a response to his 911 call so he could tell me she must have forgotten it was there and fell on it. They’ll be more valuable for anything they saw or heard. You know them?”

“Just Luther. The kid’s done everything possible to break his grandfather’s heart.”

Amos Audley’s limp was more pronounced as he struggled to follow Grayson while keeping an eye on Mercer’s charge.

“Banger?”

“Sorry?”

“Is he in a gang? A gangbanger?”

“Yeah. Something to do with that dead rap gangster they all idolize,” Gaskin said.

“Tupac Shakur,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Rapist and rapper. One of Coop’s best teammates prosecuted him for molesting a teenage fan, which only helped confer sainthood on him.”

“ ’ Course they idolize him. He was a total thug.”