Easy Prey

Chapter 26

Saturda.y. Day eight.

He took Jael back home at two o'clock. Then, restless and awake, a little moody from the sex, he took I-394 west to the 494694 belt-line, decided at the last minute to go north, and drove the 694 north, then east across the north side of the Metro area, then south again, and back into St. Paul on I-94. The trip took most of an hour, and he used the time to think about Jael, and Weather, and Catrin.

He felt a strong tie to Weather; he couldn't help it. If she called in the morning and said, "To hell with it, let's get married next week," he'd probably say yes. On the other hand, she was making some preliminary moves toward what might be a reconciliation, and he was sleepingwell, not sleepingwith Jael. He was risking the Weather tie with a woman who wouldn't be around long. He knew Jael would be moving on, and Jael knew he knew it; and when he wasn't looking at her, he hardly thought about her, at least on a conscious level.

But his car kept steering itself to her doorstep, and he kept winding up in a bed or on a couch or on the floor with her. And heliked it. Most of that was Jael herself; She was not self-conscious about sex. and not particularly concerned that Lucas enjoy himself. She was getting her own, and letting Lucas take care of himself, which he did. And he likedthat. This wasserious casual sex.

So now he was going to lunch with Weather; the lunch had the feel of a crisis meeting. If nothing happened tomorrow, it was likely nothing would happen at all. Amoment was occurring. He could pick it up or let it go, and he really wanted to pick it up, but maybe if he could just get another week of rolling around with Jael Maybe two weeks?

He thought of the legendary quote from St. Augustine that so beguiled his high school classmates who were headed for a seminary: "Please, Lord, make me pure but not yet."

Then there was Catrin, a problem that might be more serious than Jael. She pulled on him. And he couldn't help thinking that if it didn't work with Weather, it might yet work with Catrin. He was curious about her; liked her a lot twenty years before, might have gotten serious about her twenty years ago. And, as he thought about it, he wondered if one reason that he'd never married was the relationship he'd had with her so long ago: She had somehow immunized him against marriage. Thatthat had been a moment, and on that moment, he'd passed.

He pushed the Porsche down the ramp onto I-94, let it wind, kicked it out of the chute and past a Firebird like the Pontiac wasparked, and decided that his brain was getting tired of italics. Had to make a decision.

But if he could just get another week or two out of Jael, could he be happy? Did he even want to be?

"Fuck it," he said aloud. But he didn't mean it. He was hanging a little over 125 on a nearly empty interstate when he passed Snelling Avenue. Thirty seconds later, he flashed past a highway patrolman going the other way, on the other side of the highway. He saw the flashers come up and grinned, took the Porsche up the ramp at Cretin-Vandalia, and turned left toward home. The guy had no chance.

At ten o'clock the next morning, a cop called to say that Olson was moving. "We don't know what he's doing. He got out on the interstate and he's done a couple of laps around the St. Paul side. He stopped once at White Bear Avenue to get gas."

"How close has he gotten to Highland Park?"

"He took 35E from 94 to 494, so he went right past Spooner's exit at Randolph or at Seventh. If he'd gotten off at either one, we would have been screaming our heads offbut he's just driving."

"Keep calling me," Lucas said.

Weather called while he was in the shower. "I've got a problem," she said.

"No lunch?" he asked, dripping water on the hallway floor.

She could hear the disappointment. "I'm sorry, but this thing just came up and I've got to deal with it."

"Doesn't sound medical," Lucas said.

"Its not. Lucas, I'm being damnit, we need to sit down and talk this out. I have not had a sexual relationship since we split up."

"Why face a disappointment any sooner"

"Will you shut up? Will you just shut the fuck up for a minute?" she said.

"All right," he said.

"I have not had a sexual relationship, but there was this doctor"

"The Frenchman?"

"You know about this?" she asked.

"I know you were going out with some Frenchman."

"Not going out with. I went out with him three times. Or four times. Or maybe, I don't know, five or six times. We never really stopped or anything. I was busy or he was busy and it sort of drifted, and then he had to go back to Paris for a while."

"He came back."

"Yeah. He called last night and he wanted to have lunch today," she said. "He was pretty insistent, even when I said I was pretty busy I think I've got to go talk to him."

"And?"

"I'm ultimately not interested in Frenchmen," she said.

"Well, Jesus, Weather, why don't you just tell him to blow it out his froggy ass?"

"I don't think that would exactly be a diplomatic way to handle it"

"You aren't the fuckin' State Department." He let himself get a little angry about it.

" and I've got to work with him. He's an important guy around here."

They talked for another minute or two, and he let himself get a little angrierand at the bottom of it, was satisfied that she was impressed by the anger. Then he went back to the shower, finished cleaning up, and got dressed. All right. He picked up the phone and dialed Jael.

She answered on the third ring, and he said, "Your problem is, you're too Victorian."

"That's my problem, all right," she said lazily. "Hang on" He could hear her yell, "It's okay, it's for me," and then she was back.

"Have you had breakfast?"

"I'm barely awake. It's not even ten-thirty," she said.

"I'll come get you if you want."

"Can't. I've got a half-dozen people coming at noon. We're working out a joint show, and we've got way too many people. We're trying to figure out how to screw some of them. You're welcome to come over, but you wouldn't like the people, and I don't want any of them thrown out any windows."

"Goddamnit. I can't find anyone to talk to this morning," he said.

"And tonight, my dad's getting in. We're all going over to the airport to pick him up. So"

"No dinner. No midnight snack."

"You ever tried phone sex?" she asked.

"Tried once, but it doesn't work. I feel like a silly jerk-off."

"That's sort of inevitable," she said.

"On the other hand, I'm good at giving it. I wouldn't want to use the wordbrilliant, but then, I'm a modest kind of guy."

"Really? That's interesting," she said. "I mean, how would you start it?"

"Are you still in bed?"

"Yeah."

"What are you wearing?" he asked.

"A flannel nightshirt and underpants and socks," she said.

"Socks? Jesus. That makes it a little harder," Lucas said.

"Come on, Davenport."

"All right. You know that fake Indian dreamcatcher you've got hanging over your sink?"

"Yeah?"

"Go get it," he said.

"Go get it? What for?"

"Listen, are you going to do this, or not?"

"Well I just wanted to know"

"You're gonna need that hawk feather," he said.

After a moment, she said, "Hang on."

"Wait a minute! You still there?"

She came back. "Yes?"

"Didn't I see one of those Lady Remington leg shavers in the bathroom?"

"Yes?"

"Bring that too," Lucas said.

"I'll tell you right now, I'm not shaving anything," she said.

"You don't use those things toshave," Lucas said. "You use them toshave? You naive little waif, you."

"I'll be right back," she said.

The City Hall was quiet; there were fewer TV trucks at the curb, and the Homicide office was mostly empty. Del called on the cell phone and said, "Hot damn, you've turned it on."

"Yeah. What's going on?"

"Nothing. I was just calling to ask."

"All right. I'm turning this fucking thing off."

"Nodon't do that. Listen, I'm gonna take off with the old lady this afternoon. Go see an aunt of hers, and then maybe go look at some carpet."

"You're doing carpet?"

"Yeah, maybe for the family room."

"All right. Well. See you later."

He wound up in his office with all the paper on the case; he found nothing new, but strengthened his sense that Spooner was at the bottom of it. Then Lester called, and said that the gay friend of John Dukeljin, who had identified Spooner as being at the party, and carrying a shoulder bag, remembered seeing a man with a bag but couldn't pick Spooner out of a photo spread.

"Par for the course," Lucas said. "You find anybody else?"

"Two other people think they saw him. But the guy is sort of a nebbish, and the light was bad, they had those strobe things you dance to So that's what we sot."

Rose Marie called and said, "Here's a mystery for you. Why would the head of the state highway patrol call me up at home and say, 'Tell that fuckin' Davenport to knock it the fuck off?"

Lucas thought for a moment. "Must be political," he said. "He's a Republican."

"I thought it might be something like that," she said.

"Is Olson coming in this afternoon?" Lucas asked.

"No. I told him we'd call if there were any serious developments."

"All right. I'm outa here."

"See you Monday And Lucas, knock it the fuck off, whatever it is."

He called Catrin at her home, ready to hang up at a man's voice. "What are you doing?"

She didn't need to ask who it wasa good sign, "Well. I'm moving out."

"When?"

"I'm staying with a friend tonight. Jack seems to be mostly amused," she said. "Maybe he thinks I'm going through some kind of phase. It's making me really angry."

"If you'd like to get a bite and talk, I'll meet you halfway."

"God, Lucas, could we tomorrow?" she asked. "I'm just really jammed today. I mean, I packed away my daughters First Communion pictures."

"Okay, okay Don't tell me. You've got my cell phone?"

"You never answer."

"It's now permanently onat least for the duration of the Alie'e thing."

"I'll call you."

He had wicked designs on three women, was worried sick about how he could possibly juggle them and he couldn't get a date. "They'll always take you at Saks," he said to his office walls.

They took him at Saks. For a lot. "Lucas, how are you" the custom-shop salesman said. "We havegot something for you. I've been saving it. Two new fabrics from Italy you won't believe that they're wool."

He killed two hours at Saks and wrote a check for three thousand dollars. He took a call halfway through the fitting from the cops who were tailing Olson.

"We got a concept," the cop said.

"I'm interested."

"We just took Olson back to his motel. He's preaching tonight down in West St. Paul you know where the Southview Country Club is?"

"Yeah."

"He'll be at a church right around there. He actually got off this tour he was doing, and drove into the church parking lot, like he was just figuring out where it was. Then he went back to driving, and finally wound up here at the motel. And what we got to thinking was, what if he's timing something?"

"Huh."

"Yeah. When you think about it, West St. Paul and Spooner's place in Highland Park, you don't connect them, but if you look at a map, it ain't farabout six miles, and most of that is Interstate. He could do a round-trip in less than fifteen minutes. What if he does his weird preaching thing, then tells the pastor or whoever that he needs to be alone for a bit, to recoveror thinks of some shit like thatgoes out to his car, runs over to Highland Park, wastes Spooner, runs back, and there he is: all those witnesses who say he was at the church."

"Sounds Hollywood."

"Yeah, well that's our concept."

"Could be his concept, too. How many guys we got on Spooner tonight?"

"Two or four."

"I'll make sure it's four. You need any more help on Olson?" Lucas asked.

"If he goes to the church, we could use one more car, for awhile, anyway."

"All right, get me a radio, and I'll come out and sit with you. I'm not doing anything."

He spent the rest of the afternoon walking around towngot his hair cut, visited a game store, three bars, and a gun shop, where a dealer tried to sell him a $2,600 Scout rifle by Steyr.

"I'd have to shoot a deer that dressed out at thirteen hundred pounds to get my money back," Lucas said, looking at the rifle. "On the hoof, that's a two-thousand-pound whitetail. That's a whitetail the size of a Chevy pickup."

"It's not the deer, it's the aesthetics of the machinery," the dealer said. The dealer had quit his job as an English teacher to take up gun sales. "Look at this piece"

"The bolt handle's weird," Lucas said.

"Its German."

"It's weird."

"Forget the bolt for a minute, look"

"Why's the scope way out there on the end?"

"I'll tell you why." The dealer pointed out the window. "Swing it at something across the street. Keep both eyes open and then let your right eye just look through the scope."

Lucas swung. "Whoa that's nice. You shoot where you're looking."

"They didn't mean it to be, but this is the perfect North Woods deer rifle. There's never been anything better."

"Caliber's too small."

"A. 308's too small? Have you been smokin' something strange? A. 308 is absolutely"

"Not for a two-thousand-pound deer. And the bolt handle's weird."

"You aren't the artist I thought you were, Davenport," the dealer said. "I can barely contain my disappointment."

At six o'clock, he drifted down toward West St. Paul, located the church, then got dinner at a steak house and made it back to the church a little before seven-thirty. He hooked up with one of the surveillance cops, a guy from Intelligence, and got a radio and a pair of binoculars. "I'm getting pretty tired of this," the cop said.

"Maybe something will pop," Lucas said. "Where do you want me?"

"See that hill? If you go up there, there are a row of houses where the backyards look right down on the parking lot. If you could go up there, find somebody at home and hustle them a little"

"How will I know which car is Olson's?"

"Call us when you're set, and when Olson rolls in, and he's inside, I'll walk over to his car and point a flashlight up at you. We'll have somebody inside the church watching Olson. We're most concerned that he might find a way to sneak out and get rolling before we know it. Or maybe have another car ditched here by one of his Burnt River pals."

"All right. I'll set up."

Lucas found a house with lights, showed his ID, and got permission to sit out on the patio. The owner dug a webbed folding chair out of a lawn shed and gave it to him.

Olson was already moving, a little early. He arrived twenty minutes before he was to preach; the Intelligence cop spotted the car for him, and Lucas settled down to wait. The radio burped every few minutes: when Olson started preaching; when other cars came or went; and an occasional observation on life.

Four people in two cars were at Spooner's, watching front and back, and they weighed in from time to time. Spooner was at home, but the front drapes were drawn. Then Spooner's garage lights came on, and a minute later Spooner backed out in his car. The people watching him scrambled. Spooner drove five blocks to a SuperAmerica, bought something, walked half a block to a Blockbuster Video, rented a movie, and drove back home. The garage door went down. The watchers settled in.

The guy on the radio said, "Olsons getting cranked. The crowd's rolling with him."

A minute later: "There's a guy coming from the north side, he's walking a pooch"

"Got him."

Then one of the cops watching Spooner said, "Spooner just came out in his shirt. He's looking up at his roof. What the fuck is he SPOONER'S DOWN, SPOONER'S DOWN. HOLY SHIT, DAVE, DAVE. Do you see"

And they lost them; and then they were back. "WEST WEST WEST.