BARELY NINETY MINUTES after Maggie had dropped me off, she circled back and met me in Times Square so
we could pick up the search for Leonard Barr.
We headed to the Bronx, looking for Watson Residential Construction, the company owned by Vic Watson,
Leonard Barr’s st epfather. It had been easy enough to find the business records and address. The question was if
Watson was going to be more helpful than his wife. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be as drunk as her while he was at
work. But I’d been wrong about that in the past with other people.
We found the small office after spotting two orange trucks with the company’s logo on them. A security gate was
open and another truck was parked inside the fence that surrounded the small building. A man was working in the
courtyard, clearing debris.
As we got out of the car, I turned to Maggie and said, “We’ve got nothing to lose. I’m sure Barr’s mom was already
on the phone telling him the cops stopped by.” We had to assume at this point that Leonard Barr knew we were
looking for him. I didn’t know what kind of effort he’d make to stay on the run. We had no charges. We just wanted
to talk to him.
As soon as we st epped past the security gate, the man working in the courtyard turned and set down whatever he’d
been holding. He was a muscular Black man in his early fifties. “Can I help you folks?”
I smiled and was about to ask for the owner, but there was something about this man that seemed approachable and
open. I had a feeling that he might be rec eptive to helping us. “I’m an NYPD homicide detective trying to locate
Leonard Barr,” I said. “As I understand it, his st epdad is Vic Watson. Do you know if Mr. Watson is in the office?”
The man looked left and right and shook his head. He st epped a little closer to me. “No, Vic isn’t in the office right
now.”
“Do you know his st epson, Leonard?”
“I do. He goes by Pry.”
“Pry?” After a moment, I laughed. “Oh, I get it. Pry Barr. That’s pretty good.”
“Can we ke ep this conversation confidential?”
“I won’t even ask your name.”
“None of the workers around here would care much if Pry ended up in jail again,” the man said. “The couple of
times he was supposed to work here, he caused a lot more problems than he solved. That boy is a plain dumbass.”
That made me chuckle again. I looked around and didn’t see any other employees.
“I’ve been with Watson construction for seventeen years now. Vic married Pry’s mother about fifteen years ago.
The boy’s been coming and going since then.” The man wiped his brow with an actual handkerchief he took from
his pocket. Then he said, “I know Pry is an embarrassment to his st epfather. The kid could have it all. Instead, he
just parties and hangs out with a bunch of weirdos.”
“What kind of weirdos?”
“The kind that live off their parents and don’t work. So people like Pry.
He doesn’t seem to do much of anything exc ept... hang out.”
“Do you happen to know where he hangs out?”
“I heard he likes to go to some club set up in a warehouse not that far from here,” the man said.
“Can you give me any directions to this club?”
In my pocket-size not epad, he drew me a quick sketch with a few landmarks. I knew the area he was talking about,
but this sounded like a pop-up place, nothing I would be familiar with. I shook the man’s hand and said, “Thanks
very much. Guys like you make our job a lot easier.”
The man smiled and said, “When I was a youngster, maybe fourteen or fifteen, I made some bad choices. A young
cop who worked our neighborhood caught me vandalizing a car one day. Instead of taking me to jail, he took me
over to some athletic fields not far from our apartment in Harlem. He showed me a bunch of other young people
about my age. Then
he took the time to introduce me to every one of them. He’d come by and pick me up from our apartment every
afternoon until it was a habit that I did on my own. I have no doubt he saved me from a life of disappointment in
jail.”
“Those are the kinds of the stories I like to hear. You remember the cop’s name?”
“Of course I do. Dave Sharp.”
I laughed out loud and told him that I knew Dave well. I also told him that Dave’s son, Scott Sharp, was working
patrol in Queens now.
I could feel the temperature dip as the sun slowly disappeared. I turned to Maggie and said, “We better get going.”