Chosen Prey

15

WEATHER HAD SPENT the night at her own place. "If we haven't rung the bell yet, I don't think we'll get it done this month," she'd said. "Plus, my house is getting stale. I need to air it out."

Lucas didn't remember that when he woke up. Still drowsy, he reached out for her shoulder, came up with air, and bumped up, quickly awake, looking for her. He remembered the question he'd asked the night before. Pregnant? Not pregnant? When would they know?

"In the bye and bye," she'd said cheerfully. "It was fun working with you, Davenport. Maybe we can do it again next month. Then again, maybe we won't have to."

He half-smiled at the thought, punched his pillow back into shape, and drifted off again. Lucas liked to stay up late, but didn't like early mornings. A good day, he believed, generally started around ten o'clock.

TEN O'CLOCK WAS just coming up when the phone rang, and continued to ring. He recognized Del's style. "Yeah?"

"Randy's around, but I can't find him. People say he ran into some shit out in L.A. Ambition combined with stupidity, probably."

"Probably," Lucas said. He yawned. "Who'd you talk to?"

"The Toehy sisters. They said he was running a hooker named Charmin until a couple of weeks ago, but-"

"Charmin like the toilet paper?"

"That's what they say. Anyway, he wandered off in a cocaine blizzard, and she transferred to DDT and that's where she's still at. Thing is, I can't find DDT right now. I got a couple of people looking for him and also for Randy."

"DDT, huh?"

"Yeah. Thought you might be interested."

"I am. Did Marshall ride with you?" Lucas asked.

"You know: That's how it goes," Del said.

"He's standing next to you?"

"You got it," Del said.

"Careful with him. I hate to say no, that he can't come along-but if he starts stepping on you, I'll pack his ass back to Wisconsin."

"We'll figure something out," Del said. "We're okay for now."

"You want me to come along if you find DDT?"

"If you don't mind. He owes you big, and he don't owe me shit."

"Gimme a call," Lucas said.

Lucas shaved and spent ten minutes in the shower, working on a sound he'd heard on a David Allen Coe album, from a song called "The Ride"-twisting the word "moan," trying to get three syllables out of it. He agreed with himself that he sounded particularly good that morning, got dressed, looked out the window-patches of blue sky and the street was dry-and loaded into the Porsche.

He was carrying a red apple and whistling when he pushed into the office. Marcy was talking on the phone, twisting a ring of her dark hair around her index finger, her feet up on her desk. She stopped playing with her hair long enough to raise a hand to Lucas, then started talking into the phone again. Lucas paused and looked her over: Marcy tended to be a little too tense all the time, and when the tension was suddenly relieved, it showed.

She noticed him studying her and turned away. Lucas continued into his office, a little pissed now: That goddamn Kidd had gotten into her pants. He knew the look too well to be mistaken. And they hardly knew each other, Lucas thought, and Kidd was a lot older. He retracted that a bit: Not too old-actually, he was probably a year or two younger than Lucas, so he couldn't be too old, because Lucas himself had…

"Goddamnit," he said. He flipped the apple up at the wall and caught it on the rebound, leaving a small pink patch behind on the wall. If Kidd and Marcy… He didn't want to think about it. But it sure as hell was going to reduce her efficiency at a critical moment in the case, and-

"I don't want to hear the first fuckin' word from you." Marcy was in the doorway.

"I just-"

"Not the first fuckin' word," she said, holding up a finger. When he opened his mouth again, she said, "No! Bad dog."

Lucas dropped into his chair, looked away from her, then said, quickly, "You don't know him that well."

"Shut up, Mr. Why-don't-we-screw-Marcy-Sherrill-on-the-office-carpet."

"We knew each other," Lucas protested. "For a long time. That was spontaneous."

"So was last night. And I'll tell you what, he's a good guy," she said.

"You spend the night?"

"He did. At my place. We were just coming back from dinner, and it happened."

"He bring his toothbrush?"

"No, he didn't bring his toothbrush. And that's all I'm telling you," she said.

"What'd he brush his teeth with?"

"His finger."

"That's so unsanitary," Lucas said sourly.

Marcy put her hands on the top of her head and started to laugh, and a moment later Del came in, with Marshall trailing behind, and asked, "What's so funny?"

"He is," Marcy said, pointing at Lucas.

"I ain't even gonna ask," Del said, looking from one to the other. To Lucas: "We found DDT."

DDTSTOOD FOR Dangerous Darrell Thomas. Thomas had given himself the name when he was riding with a motorcycle club and was interviewed for a public radio magazine. The magazine writer got it wrong, though, and referred to him as TDT-Terrible Darrell Thompson-which lost something of its intent when expressed as initials; and since the writer got the last name wrong, too, Thomas never again trusted the media.

Darrell wasn't much of a pimp. He didn't solicit customers and he wasn't particularly interested in sex, money, or any kind of fashion. His only pimping qualification was that he liked to fight, and when a girl wanted to leave her former sponsor, or was having trouble with a customer who expected fidelity, she might move in with Darrell.

He would grudgingly take care of her, and if she wanted to chip in a few bucks every once in a while, and maybe clean house and cook a few meals, that was okay. And if she didn't, that was okay, too. They tended to drift away when they discovered that Darrell really didn't care.

At all. About anything.

Except cars.

Darrell was a professional house-sitter.

"Can't believe he got a gig in Edina," Lucas said, as they pulled into his driveway. They were driving a city car, a dented Dodge, and they all peered through the windshield at the house. The house was long and white and two-storied, with double faux-marble pillars on either side of the front entry. "Wonder what the neighbors think about the whores going in and out all the time?"

"Maybe they think it's colorful," Del said.

They got out of the Dodge, and Lucas took a second to look around the neighborhood. Nothing moved: The place was one large bedroom.

When Lucas caught up, Del and Marshall were already looking at an enormous wrought-iron knocker on the front door. "Use the doorbell," Marshall said. "You'll knock the door down if you use that thing."

"How about a nice-knocker joke?" Del asked.

"None of those either," Lucas said. Del leaned on the doorbell, and after three long buzzes ten seconds apart, a woman with power-frizzed hair, wearing a pale blue quilted housecoat, stuck her head out, looked at the three of them, and snarled, "What?"

"Time to get up, sleepyhead," Del said, showing her a badge. "We're friends of DDT. Is he home?"

"Yeah, but he's in the spa," she said.

"That's something I wouldn't want to miss," Del said. He stepped forward and the woman stepped back, a good enough invitation, they thought, and they all trooped inside.

"It's outside, on the deck," the woman said, pointing at faux French doors at the far end of the living room.

Del's nose was working. "Something smells like dog shit," he said.

"We got a new puppy," the woman said. As she passed the table, she picked up a bottle half full of white wine and started working the cork loose. "We're paper-training it. You guys want some wine?"

Lucas said, "No, thanks," and she took a pull on the bottle, and Del and Lucas walked over to the French doors and out onto a deck.

The spa was big enough to seat eight, but in this case, sat three: DDT, a large, balding, and mildly fat man with scant chest hair, who was reading a folded copy of The New York Times; and two women, both with short mousy brown hair. Steam rose out of the spa into the cold air, but they all seemed comfortable: None of them were wearing any clothing at all, and when Lucas, Del, and Marshall pushed through the doors, one of the women said, "Better turn on the bubbler, Marie."

"Hey, Lucas, how they hanging, man?" DDT said, looking up from the paper. "Del, you fuckhead. What's happening?" To the girls he said, "They're cops."

"We got a problem, Darrell," Lucas said. "We're looking for a girl named, uh…" He looked at Del.

Del said, "Charmin."

DDT pointed at one of the mice, who said, "Jesus Christ, it's Charmin', like in Charming, you asshole. It's not sharmin, like the toilet paper."

"We thought maybe it came from Please Don't Squeeze The," Marshall said. The crow's-feet around his eyes compressed a little, and the corners of his mouth may have turned up. He was being funny, Lucas realized.

"No, it don't," the woman said frostily.

"You guys want to get in? Plenty of room. Water's hot," DDT said, nodding at the bubbling surface.

"Ah, we're kinda running," Lucas said, looking at Charmin'; she was the larger of two women, and her breasts were floating on the top of the water, her nipples pointing straight out like the prows on a couple of fancy powerboats. "Charmin', you were working for Randy Whitcomb until not long ago, and we need to find him."

"What's he done?" she asked.

"Nothing. We're trying to figure out where he might have bought some jewelry. This was back before he went to L.A."

"Yeah? I wasn't with him them. I didn't join up until after he got back."

"I know that," Lucas said patiently. "But we need to find him now."

"I don't know if I oughta talk to cops," she said. "Randy's a crazy motherfucker."

"Tell them," DDT said.

She looked at him and said, "You're supposed to be on my side."

"I owe him," he said. "Big-time. So you can tell him or move the fuck out."

She looked at DDT for a minute, then at Lucas, and said, "He's in St. Paul, one of them gray apartments on Sibley. I don't know the number." She gave them a few details, and Lucas nodded: He knew exactly where she meant. "Thanks."

"You be careful. The crazy fucker's been smokin' crack since he got back-he ain't got any brains left. And don't tell him where you got this."

DDT said, "So what're you driving?"

"C4," Lucas said. "Bought it new last year."

"Yeah? But you're not right now…" He raised his eyebrows and looked at the three large men.

"Not with me. I'm in a company car," Lucas said.

"Whyn't you bring it around sometime?" DDT asked.

"I will," Lucas said. "Probably when it warms up a little. We'll take it out for a run."

"Do that," DDT said.

On the way out of the house, Marshall said, "That was pretty smooth. Why'd he owe you so big?"

"Last fall, I found him a four-fifty-five Olds engine. He was really hurting for one," Lucas said.

Marshall looked at him strangely and said, "You pullin' my weenie?"

"No… I mean, it was absolutely cherry."

LUCAS CALLED ST. Paul from the car, got Allport and filled him in on the jewelry and the connection to Randy Whitcomb.

"I thought that cocksucker had moved to San Diego or something," Allport said. "I'll check with the condo association and see where he is."

"We're on our way right now," Lucas said. "If you or one of your guys wants to hook up with us."

"Need some help?"

"We could use a warrant and somebody to block the back."

"Warrant's no problem, not with this case. I'll get a couple of squads and come up myself," Allport said. "What, half an hour, forty-five minutes?"

"About that," Lucas said.

They were out on I-494, one of the outer-loop highways around the Cities. Marshall, in the back, leaned forward and asked, "What are we doing?"

"St. Paul's going to block for us," Lucas said. He explained the layout of the apartment complex: a rectangular block of two-story townhouse condos, facing the streets on all four sides of a city block. The interior of the rectangle was a common lawn, with marked but unfenced private patio areas behind each town house.

"Can you get a car in back?" Marshall asked.

"Not without trying pretty hard. There're arched entrances to the big lawn on all four sides, but they're not used for vehicles. Not regularly, anyway. I think they're more like an emergency thing if there was a fire or something. St. Paul guys'll have to go in on foot."

"Think this guy'll run?"

"Can't tell what Randy'll do," Del said. "He's a rattlesnake and a crazy motherfucker. Comes from a decent family, and they just should have snapped his neck when he was a baby. Would have saved everybody a lot of grief."

"Known a couple like that myself," Marshall said. He thought about it for a minute, then said, "Farm kids, usually. When it happens like that."

AFTER ANOTHER PHONE call to Allport, they agreed to meet three blocks from Randy's to coordinate. Six St. Paul uniformed guys arrived in three squads, including one guy who was the designated hammer. They were all in their thirties-veterans-and Lucas guessed that it was not by chance: Allport was taking it seriously.

"The problem is that the door is at the bottom of a set of stairs-the downstairs part is basically a garage and workshop, or extra bedroom, and the living quarters are upstairs. So we're gonna be squeezed onto the stairs if we have to kick the door," Allport said. He looked around at his crew. "Lucas and Del and I have known this asshole ever since he came downtown six or seven years ago. He can be bad news, so be careful. He's not that big, but he's crazy and he's tough as a goddamn hickory tree. He's a biter. He'll bite your goddamn fingers off if you get too close."

The uniforms weren't worried. "Give us a couple of minutes to get close," one of them said. "He won't run away from us."

"We've never found a gun on him," Lucas said. "But he's carried one from time to time. He's been doing a lot of crack, we hear, and maybe some other shit. So… if you've got to tackle him, tackle him hard. Don't hurt him-we need him to talk to us."

They were all starting to breathe hard, feeling the rush: a critical point on the case, and with a crazy.

"Come in last," Del told Lucas. "If there's no trouble, it won't make any difference. If there is trouble, maybe it won't rub off on you-but if there's big trouble, you'll be in position to lay some shit on him."

Lucas nodded. Randy had been a new guy on the block when one of his girls had spent some time with Lucas, talking. Randy had heard about it. He'd learned from the cheaper TV shows that the girl had to be taught a lesson for her disrespect, or he'd be disrespected himself. He'd taught her the lesson with a church key, cutting an average-looking hooker into a scholarly paper in a plastic surgery journal.

Lucas had felt pressured by street ethics to repay the attack. He and Del had gone to arrest Randy at a bar, but everybody had known it would come to a fight-and it had. Lucas had gone a little further than he intended, had lost it a little, and Randy had ended that particular day in Hennepin General's critical-care unit.

After a long tangled series of arguments and legal maneuvers, Lucas had left the department under the cloud of possible excessive-force charges. He'd been back for a while, but Randy Whitcomb still could be a political problem.

The hooker had left the streets after she got out of the hospital, and now worked at a Wal-Mart checkout. She looked okay from three feet, though a close inspection showed a plaid pattern of scars across both of her cheeks. She didn't talk to Lucas anymore.

They went to Randy's door by walking along the face of the apartment building, five of them, led by Allport, followed by the hammer, then Del, then Lucas, with Marshall trailing. At the door, Allport spoke into a handset: "Ready?"

The uniforms were in position, and Allport slipped his gun, nodded, and pushed the doorbell. No answer. He pushed it again and they heard feet on the stairs, and then the bolt rattled and the door opened, just a crack, with a chain across the crack. Through the crack, Lucas saw a slice of Randy's face and one eye. Randy jerked back and screamed, "Shit," as Allport stepped forward and Lucas said, "Watch it!" The door slammed and the bolt slammed with it, and Allport said, "Hit it."

Lucas stepped out of the way, and the uniform swung his sledge-hammer at the doorknob. The door blew open with the sound of a Cadillac hitting a picket fence. Allport did a quick peek, pulled back, said, "Let's go," and burst in onto the landing. He was turning for the stairs, Del two steps behind him, when the first shot BANGED overhead and Allport screamed, "GUN," and he and Del both went down and scrambled back off the stairs and out the door.

Lucas did a quick peek, saw nothing, and heard Allport screaming, "Gun," into his handset, and at the same time saw Del rolling off the porch and onto his feet, and then he was onto the stairs, moving up, felt Del behind him as a shadow, shouted, "Watch along the railing, watch…" And they both watched the railing at the stop of the stairwell…

From up the stairs Lucas heard glass break, then another shot BANGED through the apartment, and he flinched and looked back and it wasn't Del behind him but Marshall, a trooper's long-barreled. 357 revolver in his fist. He had no time to think when Marshall said, "I'll go to the top, you peek over the rail," and then Marshall was past him to the top of the stairs, and Lucas did a quick peek between the rails at the top and couldn't see anything.

Marshall scrambled out onto the carpet at the top, and he was shouting, "Living room is clear, I don't see him."

Another BANG from the back, and Lucas shouted, "He's in the back, it sounds like he went out." He heard somebody screaming, "Watch it, watch it, coming your way, watch it…"

Allport, he thought, and then he was at the top of the stairs and saw Marshall, now up and moving in a crouch, headed toward a hallway leading toward the back. He did a peek as Lucas came up and said, "Clear, I think."

Lucas did a peek and heard more shouting from the back, and ran down the hallway just in time to hear a fusillade of shots, and more yelling. He was coming up on a room to his right and a closed door on his left. He did a quick peek into the bedroom, saw nothing, continued through a small kitchen, saw broken glass, shouted back, "Watch the rooms, they're not clear, they're not clear," saw Del behind Marshall, got to the window, and looked out.

Randy Whitcomb was lying faceup, spread-eagled on the grass below the back deck. His shirt was soaked with blood and one hand was flapping convulsively, as though he were fanning himself with a broken arm.

Lucas turned, saw Del and Marshall in the hallway, and said, "He's down out back. Check the rooms." Allport and the hammer cop loomed from the living room. To Allport, Lucas said, "Get an ambulance moving." Then he was out and down the stairs onto the lawn, where the St. Paul uniforms, guns still drawn, had gathered around Randy.

Randy had been hit four times, twice in the legs, once in the stomach, and once in his left forearm, the arm that had been flapping. One of the uniform cops was now holding it to the grass so he couldn't flap it. Randy wasn't saying anything, not a sound: no whimpers, nothing. His eyes rolled, rolled, rolled, from this side to the other, up and down; and his mouth strained, not to say something, but as if it were trying to escape his face.

"Got an ambulance coming," Lucas said to him. He didn't hear it.

One of the St. Paul uniforms said, "He had a gun."

"Yeah, he let go a couple of times inside," Lucas said.

The cop said, "He had a gun. Up there, we heard it."

"Yeah, he did."

One of the other cops said, "I think it's in the bushes. He had it in his hand when he came out."

"Find it," Lucas said. "Don't touch, just find it."

Del came out on the deck. "Nobody in the house. But, uh…" He looked back into the condo, and Lucas could hear Marshall talking. Then Del turned back to Lucas and said, "There's a lot of blood up here."

"Nobody shot at him up there."

"No, no, I mean, somebody else's blood. He was trying to clean it up with paper towels, but it's kind of splattered on the couch and there are little droplets on the wallpaper."

Now Randy moaned, just once. Lucas looked down at him and said, "What'd you do?" But Randy didn't hear him; he just rolled his eyes again.

From the corner of the house, one of the St. Paul uniforms said, "There it is." To Lucas: "Got the gun, Chief."

"Just stay right next to it. Keep an eye on it until the crime-scene people get here. Don't let anyone get near it."

Allport came out on the deck and asked, "Everybody okay?"

"Everybody except Randy. He's hit pretty hard." Lucas looked down at him again. Randy's shirt was soaked with blood, and Lucas noticed that even with the convulsions running through his upper body, his lower body never moved. Spinal, he thought.

Allport yelled at one of the uniforms: "Freeze everything, John. Don't let anything move." Then, to Lucas: "You oughta come up and look at this mess."

Lucas said, "Okay," then looked down at Randy again. "What the fuck did you do, you little asshole? What'd you do?"