Storm prey

2

Lucas Davenport cracked his eyes at nine o'clock and did the calculation: Weather should be done with the initial part of the operation. She'd be removing one of the expanders, and also making the first cuts down to the skull itself. If it had gone off as scheduled, at seven-thirty, she'd be drinking a cup of coffee, while the bone-cutter went to work.

All right. Interesting.

He lay under the blankets for a couple of minutes, listening: nothing to hear. Might be snowing again. Lucas had helped the architect put the house together, and had isolated the bedroom suite at the north end, away from the other bedrooms, and the kids. Weather had imported a baby monitor, so she could hear Sam wake in the night, but the monitor was quiet: the housekeeper would have Sam in hand, by this time.

Get up.

He rolled out, dropped to the carpet, did a few push-ups, a few sit-ups, picked up two twenty-five-pound dumbbells and did a hundred curls with each arm. In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and shaved, watching himself in the mirror. Still in good shape, even after a lot of hard years. But it was something he'd have to work on, he thought, as he got to fifty-once the tone is lost, it's tough to get back.

Still had all his hair, dark, but threaded through with gray. His face was too white after three months of Minnesota winter gloom, showing scars and dimples from fifteen years of hockey and twenty-five years of cops; he'd kept the winter weight off by playing basketball, his cheekbones showing beside his hawkish nose. At least he didn't smoke. He could see the smoke eating into guys like Del.

He was standing in the shower, lathered up with Weather's body wash, when she called from the bedroom-"You still in there?"

"One more minute…" he shouted back. Surprised: he hadn't expected to see her until sometime in the evening. He rinsed off the body wash, gave the ugly bits a final scrub, climbed out and found her standing in the doorway.

She reached across to the towel bar, pulled a towel free and handed it to him. "The operation was canceled because a man got murdered in the pharmacy and they took all the drugs."

"What?" He was dripping, and started to dry down.

She said, "Mmm, you smell like spring rain."

"What?"

"There were about a million media people there, all the cable networks, and Gabe had to go out and tell them the hospital got held up and they murdered Don Peterson by kicking him to death."

Held up his hands: "Wait-wait-wait. I can't listen to this naked."

"Ah, God, this is the third most awful day of my life," she said, but she popped him on the ass as he went by.

Lucas got his shorts on and pulled a T-shirt over his head. "Now. Start from the beginning."

"Okay. The hospital pharmacy got robbed. One of the pharmacists was beaten up so bad that he died. Guess who's running the investigation for Minneapolis?"

He shrugged. "Who?"

"Your old pal Titsy."

Impatient, didn't want to hear about it: "Weather… just tell me."

She backed up and sat on the bed as he dressed: "Okay. I got there on schedule…"

The brothers Lyle Mack and Joe Mack, Mikey Haines, Shooter Chapman, and Honey Bee Brown sat in the back of Cherries Bar off Highway 13, looking at an old tube TV balanced on a plastic chair, the electric cord going straight up to a light socket. The room smelled of sour empty beer bottles and wet cardboard. Three nylon bags full of drugs sat on the floor behind them, and Lyle Mack said, "You dumb fucks."

"What was we supposed to do? The guy was calling the cops," Chapman said. Haines, who'd done the kicking, kept his mouth shut.

Honey Bee stared at them, as she worked through a wad of Juicy Fruit the size of a walnut. She said, around the gum, "You guys could screw up a wet dream."

Lyle Mack was sweating, scared, and thinking: Too many witnesses. Too many people knew that Joe Mack, Haines, and Chapman had raided the pharmacy. He and Honey Bee, the three of them, anyone they may have talked to-and there were probably a couple who'd taken some hints-plus the doc, and maybe the doc's pal, the square doc, whoever he was.

"Tell me about the woman in the Audi," Lyle Mack said.

"She rolled in as we were rolling out. She might not connect us," Joe Mack said. "She saw me, I think, but who knows? Our lights was in her eyes. She was blond, she was short, was driving an Audi. Could have been a nurse."

"She totally saw you, dude," said Haines, trying to take some pressure off himself. Christ, he'd kicked that dude to death. He didn't know what he thought about that. Shooter had once killed a spade out in Stockton, California, but that was different. "That dude that died, it was like totally a freak accident. They said so on TV, he was on some meds that made him bleed. Wasn't me. I kicked him a little."

"Punted the shit out of him," said Joe Mack, passing back the pressure.

"The old fuck scratched me," Haines said. "He was hanging on."

"That was after you kicked him," Joe Mack said.

Lyle Mack asked, "How bad you hurt?"

"Aw, just bled a little, it don't show," Mikey said.

"Let me see," Lyle Mack said.

Mikey pulled up his pant leg. "Nothing," he said. He looked like he'd been scraped with a screwdriver, a long thin scratch with some dried blood.

The TV went back to the morning show where some crazy woman was talking about making decorations for Martin Luther King Day from found art, which seemed to consist of beer-can pull-tabs and bottle caps. They all watched for a minute, then Joe Mack said, "She's gotta be on something bad. You couldn't do that, normal."

Lyle Mack pointed the remote at the TV and the picture got sucked into a white dot. He scratched his head and said, "Well, now."

Honey Bee cracked her gum. "What're we gonna do?"

"Lay low," Lyle Mack said. "Dump the dope at Dad's farm. Put the guns in with the dope-they could be identified, too. Nobody touches anything for a month. You three… no, Joe Mack, you better stay here. Honey Bee can give you a haircut. Cut it right down to a butch."

"Aw, no," Joe Mack groaned.

Lyle Mack rode over him: "Mikey and Shooter, you go out to Honey Bee's. When Joe's cleaned up, me'n him'll come over. I think the three of you better get the hell over to Eddie's. Hit a couple bars every night, let everybody see you, until nobody knows exactly when you got there, and then you can say you were over there a week before this shit happened."

"Man, it's fuckin' freezin' over there," Haines said. Eddie's was in Green Bay.

"It's fuckin' freezin' here, and we can trust Eddie, and this shit wouldn't have happened if you hadn't kicked that old man to death," Lyle Mack said. "So shut up and go on over to Eddie's. Wait until night. Get over to Honey Bee's right now, until it's dark. Don't stop for no food, don't get no beer, don't let anybody see your faces. We don't want anybody sayin', 'I saw him the day it happened.'"

"What about, you know…" Chapman glanced at the packs full of drugs. "This was supposed to pay us something."

Lyle Mack got to his feet, a short heavy man in a black fleece and jeans. He went out to the front of the bar and came back three minutes later with a thin pile of fifty-dollar bills. He cut the pile more or less in half and gave one stack each to Haines and Chapman. "You go on, now. That's two thousand for each of you. It'll keep you for a month, at Eddie's. After we sell the shit, you'll get the rest."

"Green Bay, dude," Haines moaned.

"Better'n Oak Park Heights," Chapman said. Oak Park Heights was the state's supermax prison.

They all looked at each other for a moment, no sound other than a hum from a refrigeration unit, and Honey Bee's gum-chewing, and then Lyle Mack said to Haines and Chapman, "So-take off. I'll get over there soon as I can. You can get some pizzas from the freezer and take a couple cases of beer."

"Biggest score we ever did," Haines said.

"Yeah, but you had to go and fuck it up," Lyle said. HAINES AND CHAPMAN got four pizzas and two cases of Miller, and shuffled out through the back, off the loading dock. Their 2002 Trans Am was leaning against a snowdrift, and Lyle Mack stood on tiptoe, looking out of the garage door windows, watching as the two got inside, still watching until the car turned the corner.

Then he turned back to Joe Mack and Honey Bee and said, "Honey, go get me a hot fudge sundae."

"What?" Her jaw hung open, and he could see the wad of gum; it looked like a piece of zombie flesh. She was a goodlookin' woman, Lyle Mack thought, who ruined it all when she did something like that, and she did something like that all the time.

"A fuckin' hot fudge sundae," he said, patiently. "Get me a hot fudge sundae. Put the hot fudge in the microwave so it's really hot."

She shook her head, looked at her watch-it was five minutes after eight o'clock in the morning, a weird time for a hot fudge sundae, but she got up and wandered off to the front of the bar. Lyle Mack walked behind her, shut the door, and turned back to Joe.

"You crazy fuckers," he said, shaking his head. "You couldn't have done worse if you'd shot a cop. You dumb sonsofbitches."

"That fuckin' Mikey," Joe Mack said. "And I don't think sendin' us to Eddie's is gonna do much good. How many times have you heard about Shooter killing the colored dude out in California?"

Lyle Mack shook a finger at him. "That's why they aren't going to Eddie's."

"They aren't?"

"We got no choice, Joe. That old fart scratched Mikey," Lyle Mack said. "That means the cops got DNA on him. You remember when Mikey fucked that high school chick over in Edina and the cops came and made him brush his gums? That was DNA. About two minutes from now, they're going to come looking for him, and they'll give us up bigger'n shit."

Joe Mack thought about that for a few seconds, then a frown slowly crawled over his face. "If you're talking about killing them, I mean, fuck you. I'm not killing anybody," Joe Mack said. "I mean, I couldn't do it. I'd mess it up."

Lyle Mack was nodding. "Me and you both, Joe Mack. We gotta get hold of Cappy."

"Ah, man." Joe thought about Cappy for a minute, and then thought about getting a drink.

"Got no choice," Lyle Mack said. He listened toward the front of the bar for a minute, then said, "Don't tell Honey Bee about this. She likes those boys, and she'd get upset."

"What if Cappy… I mean, Shooter and Mikey is his pals."

"I don't think anybody is Cappy's pals," Lyle Mack said. "Cappy is his own pal."

Out in the Trans Am, Haines said, "Hope Honey Bee's got Home Box Office."

"Gotta stop at the house first," Shooter said.

"Lyle said-"

"It's Lyle that worries me," Chapman said. "I could see him thinkin'. He's worried about us."

"About us?" Haines didn't understand.

"About us givin' him up. I could see his beady little eyes thinkin' it over. So he sends us out to Honey Bee's, which is so far out in the country a goddamn John Deere salesman couldn't find us. Why is that? Maybe he wants to get us alone and do us."

"But he said we can't be seen," Haines whined. "He said we're going to Eddie's."

"Well, he's sorta right about not bein' seen, but we gotta take the chance," Chapman said. "We gotta run by the house, grab the guns, and then we can take off. Turn the furnace down. If we was going to Eddie's for a month, we'd at least turn the furnace down. Take the shit out of the refrigerator. Take us two minutes."

The chrome yellow Trans Am fishtailed around the corner; a great car, in the summer, but with its low-profile, high-performance rubber, a pig on ice.

Lucas finished dressing, checked himself in the mirror: charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie that vibrated with his eyes. Weather said, "And now, something occurred to me this very minute. When I was going in the parking ramp, a van was coming out really fast. We almost ran into each other."

"You weren't driving too fast, were you?" Of course she was; he'd given her a three-day race-driving course at a track in Vegas, as a birthday present, and she'd kicked everybody's ass.

Weather ignored him. "The man in the passenger seat looked like a lumberjack or something. One of those tan canvas coats that lumberjacks wear. Long hair, brown-blond, down on his shoulders, and a beard. He looked like a Harley guy. Big nose. That was just about…" She rubbed her forehead, working it out, and said, "That must have been just about the time of the robbery." She looked up: "Jeez, what if that was the guys? The driver looked the same way. I didn't see him so well, but he had a beard…"

Lucas held up a finger, picked up his cell phone, sat on the bed, and punched up a number. A moment later, said, "Yup, it's me, but I can't talk because my wife is standing about a foot away."

"Hey, Marcy," Weather called. Marcy Sherrill was a deputy chief with the Minneapolis cops: Titsy.

Lucas said, "What we need to know is, what time exactly did this whole thing happen? What time did it start, and when did it end?"

Marcy: "I don't think this is for the BCA."

"Listen, just shut up and tell me, and then I'll tell you why I want to know," Lucas said.

He listened for a moment, turned to Weather and said, "Between five-thirty and five-forty, right in there."

Weather said, "Lucas, that was… I mean, that was exactly the time I got there."

Lucas went back to the phone: "You know Weather is on the surgical team that's separating the twins? Yeah? So she pulled into the parking ramp right then, and saw a van coming out, and the face of a guy in the passenger seat. Said he looked like a lumberjack, blond or brown hair, down on his shoulders. Beard. Yeah, saw him pretty clearly. Saw the driver, too, not so well, but he had a beard. They were moving fast, and a little recklessly. Said the passenger was wearing like a yellow lumberjack coat."

"Tan canvas," Weather said.

"Tan canvas coat," Lucas repeated. He listened, then put the phone down and asked, "You get any impression of size?"

Weather closed her eyes for a minute, then said, "Yes. He was a big guy. Bigger than you. Taller, I think, and heavier."

Lucas passed it on, listened again, and said, "All right. How about… ten o'clock? Is ten good?"

When he hung up he said, "The robbers were three guys, wearing blue orderly scrubs, but the woman in the pharmacy doesn't think they were orderlies. They were apparently wearing the scrubs over street clothes. They were wearing heavy boots and ski masks, but the woman thought that at least a couple of them had beards. One of them was a really big guy. We need to talk to Marcy. Probably do a computer sketch, see if they can figure out who the guy was."

"Probably nothing, though," Weather said, as though she regretted telling him about it.

"Maybe not," he said. "But hell, you've got the day off. The kids are out of the house-let's go hang out. Talk to Marcy, do lunch. Hit a boutique. I could use a new suit or two for spring."

She nodded, quickly, and repeated, "It's probably nothing."

Lyle Mack sat in his tiny loading-dock office and thought about it for a minute, then got on the cold phone and called Barakat. He said, "We gotta talk."

"Why should I talk to you? My hands are clean," Barakat said. "You and that bunch of idiots are in trouble. I'm walking away. I know nothing. Why are you calling me? You know the police can follow phone calls-"

"I ain't stupid, we all got cold phones. You gotta get one, too."

"What?"

Lyle Mack was patient: "Go down someplace and buy a phone and a card and give them a fake name, if you gotta give them a name," Lyle Mack said. "You can get them at the grocery store. Some grocery stores. You can go to Best Buy."

"I'm telling you, I am out of all this-"

"Man, you were there. You can't walk. And I got your goods," Lyle Mack said.

"I'll get them some other time," Barakat said.

"Look. When the guys were going out the ramp, some chick was coming in. Black Audi convertible. Blond. She saw one of the guys, and we want to know who she is, just in case. They think she was probably a nurse."

"How am I going to find out? I'm not a mind reader," Barakat growled. "What am I supposed to do, walk around asking people who saw the killers coming out of the ramp? How am I supposed to know that? That somebody saw somebody?"

"Just listen," Mack said patiently. "People will talk about this for weeks-just listen. You don't have to fuckin' investigate."

Long silence. Then, "If she's a nurse, she was working the day shift," Barakat said. "There are probably a hundred Audis out in the ramp right now. So, I can keep an eye out tomorrow. If she's a shift worker, she should be coming in about the same time. That's all I can do."

"And listen around," Lyle Mack said. As an added attraction: "The goods we got for you. It's the best I've ever seen. It's like a hundred percent gold."

Alain Barakat hung up and wandered into the kitchen. Glanced at his watch; had to get back.

He was tired: he'd just worked the overnight shift, and was continuing straight through the day, with only the hour-long lunch break. He'd already used half of that, and had come home hoping to find a package inside the push-through mailbox.

Hoping against hope.

The box was empty. Lyle Mack still had the goods. The knowledge of that would drive him crazy, he thought: and sooner or later, he would be over there begging for it.

Barakat lived in a modest brick house in St. Paul's Highland Park, a street of tidy houses and neatly shoveled sidewalks and kids and yellow school buses coming and going. His father had bought the house for him, but carefully kept the title for himself, part of the family's move out of Lebanon. They were investing in real estate-houses and farmland-socking away gold coins, buying American educations for the kids.

The price of American houses had never gone down, his father had told him. A year later, when prices started going down, the old man had title to at least thirty houses in the hot markets of California and Florida. He was losing his shirt and he'd cut Barakat's allowance to five thousand a month. He said, "You're a grown man now and a doctor. You can be rich if you work."

"I don't want to be a doctor," Barakat had said. "I don't want to be in St. Paul. This is not Lebanon, Pops, this is like the North Pole. It was minus twenty here the other day."

"Men have to work. That's what men do. Finish the residency, then go where you like. Move to Los Angeles. What I know, is, I'm cutting back. You live on five thousand a month, or you go hungry."

But Barakat couldn't live on five thousand; couldn't feed the habit for five thousand. The financial problem had led to his involvement with the Macks, a solution he'd suggested himself. The whole thing had seemed so simple.

Now this.

And the blond woman.

If the blond woman was the same one he'd seen in the elevator-and he'd have bet she was, she had to have been coming down from the parking ramp, and the timing was right-then he had a problem, too. He had no reason to be back there at that time of day-the emergency room was at the far end of the hospital, and nothing at the back end was even open. If she'd picked out one of Lyle Mack's guys, and was asked if she'd seen anyone else…

He dropped in an armchair and propped his head up with his hand. Thought about the blonde, and about the goods: Lyle Mack said he had the goods. Fire in the blood; needed the goods, despite what he'd said. Why had he said he'd get them some other time? He needed them now…

Think about the blonde.

Arriving at that time of the morning, she had to be staff, and medical staff, not administrative. If she'd been an emergency case, she would have gone down the street, instead of up the ramp. If she was a nurse, she had a rich husband-nurses didn't drive Audis.

A doc? Maybe. There were lots of women docs.

His brain switched tracks again. Mack had the goods. All he had to do was pick them up. They were right there. Like a fat man thinking about a doughnut, he thought about the heft and feel of a big bag full of powder cocaine.

The keys to the kingdom of glory. He'd been sober for three days, and he didn't like it. Though he'd read that there was no real physical dependency-he wasn't shaking or seeing snakes-the psychological dependency was just as real. Without the coke, without money for the coke, he was living a drab, colorless existence, a life of shades and tints. The coke brought life, intelligence, wit, excitement, clarity: primary colors.

He looked in his wallet. Nine dollars, and he hadn't eaten in a day. Had to eat. Had to get the goods.

The Minneapolis police department is in the city hall, which is an ungainly, liver-colored building that squats in the Minneapolis glass-and-steel loop like an unseemly wart. Marcy Sherrill was slumped in her office chair, door closed to a crack. Lucas poked his nose in, called, "Hello?" He got what sounded like a feminine snore, so he knocked and tried again, louder this time. "Hello?"

Marcy twitched, sat upright, and turned and yawned, disoriented.

"Ah, jeez… come on in. I dozed off." She half-stood, then dropped back in her chair, dug in her desk drawer for a roll of breath mints, popped one.

Marcy was a tidy, athletic woman, forty or so, who'd never had a problem jumping into a fight. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she and Lucas had once, pre-Weather, spent some time together-or as Marcy said, forty days and forty nights. She'd later had a lengthy, contentious affair with a local artist, then married a medium big shot at General Mills.

And quickly produced James.

James was just back to preschool after a bout with the flu, she said, as Lucas and Weather settled into visitors' chairs. "I've been getting about two hours of sleep a night," she said. "As soon as he got better, he started running again. He never stops. He starts when he gets up, he runs until he drops, he sleeps like a log, then he starts running again."

"Same with Sam," Weather said. "Sam is starting to learn his letters now…"

They one-upped each other for a minute or two, on their respective kids' looks, intelligence, vigor, and overall cuteness. When they were done, Lucas scored it as a tie, though, of course, Weather was correct. Sam was the superior kid.

"So what do you think about this Don Peterson guy?" Lucas asked. "What'd you get?"

"The killing was pretty straightforward," Marcy said. "The killer probably didn't mean to do it. Kicked the guy a few times. According to Baker-"

"Baker's the nurse," Weather said.

"Yeah. Dorothy Baker. She was doing inventory on the drugs. She couldn't see anything, or say anything, because they taped her up, but she could hear everything. Peterson got a hand free, somehow, tried to slip his cell phone out and call nine-one-one-Baker heard the robbers talking about it-but he fumbled it and got caught. One of the guys kicked him a few times, in the back, and in the chest. That broke him up. He bled to death, internal bleeding around his kidneys. They got him to the emergency room before he died, but he only lasted a few more minutes. He was on Coumadin; there was no way to stop the bleeding."

"So this Baker-"

Marcy held up a hand, cutting him off. "You know what Peterson did? Took some balls, but he did it on purpose. When the guy started kicking him, he grabbed him, probably on his leg, and scratched him. He told Baker what he'd done, and on the way down to the ER, he came to and told one of the docs. That he scratched this guy. He had blood on his hands, skin under his nails."

"DNA," Lucas said. He'd never met Peterson, but he was suddenly proud of the guy. "That's terrific… if we can find the guy who did it."

"Yeah: we find him, we've got him," Marcy said.

"She hear anything else? Baker?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. Interesting stuff. These guys were talking as they cleaned the place out, and she said they sounded kind of dumb-like street guys," Marcy said.

"Black, white?"

"White, four of them. She saw their hands-hands of three of them, anyway. Big guys, wearing ski masks. Their hands were rough, like they worked outside. They sounded dumb, but they knew exactly what they were doing. More interesting is the fourth guy, and what she didn't hear. Or see."

"What didn't she hear?" Weather asked.

"She didn't hear anybody knock on the door, because nobody did," Marcy said. "The door just popped open and there they were, all over Baker and Peterson. The fourth guy stayed out of sight until they were on the floor."

"That door should have been locked," Weather said.

The door was locked, Marcy said. It locked automatically, and to prevent that, it had to be deliberately disabled. Peterson was already inside when Baker got there, and she used her key to get in. "She's absolutely sure the door was locked, because when she put her key in, she didn't turn it far enough, didn't click it, and when she tried the handle, it was still locked and she had to twist the key harder. So it wasn't disabled."

"The robbers had a key," Weather said.

"Yes. Plus, the fourth man stayed out of sight until both Baker and Peterson were blind. Baker said he came in and pointed out specific lockers… and she thinks she might have heard his voice before. She said he sounded like a doctor, but she didn't know who. If so, that's why they taped their eyes-they would have recognized the fourth guy. Maybe even if he wore a mask. He's the inside guy, who got the key for them."

"Interesting," Lucas said. "You're pushing that?"

"Of course. We're pushing everything," Marcy said. "We looked like goofs this morning. All the TV stations were there, a couple cable networks, for this operation on the twins-and we had to cancel it because our hospital gets knocked over? It's like when the I-35 bridge fell in the Mississippi: people ask, what the hell are you doing, your bridge fell down? Now they're asking, 'Your hospital gets held up? Your hospital? What's going on up there?'"

"Hard to believe it's a doctor," Weather said.

"Why? I've known a couple psycho doctors," Lucas said.

Marcy nodded: "Don't even get us started on nurses." She stood up and said to Weather, "Let's get you going on that drawing. I'd like to get it on the noon news."

As they were walking down the hall, Marcy added, "I want you guys to take it a little easy until we've got them locked up."

"Why's that?" Lucas asked.

Marcy said, "Well, Weather saw them-so they probably saw her."

Lucas stopped in his tracks: "I never thought of that." He looked at Weather. "I'm so dumb. That never occurred to me."

Honey Bee had once been a professional hairdresser, so she offered Joe Mack a choice of styles: greaser, punk, industrial, skater, Mohawk, or military sidewall.

"We don't want a rearrangement. We want something so different that nobody'd dream that some long-haired guy might have been him," Lyle Mack said. "Cut it all off. Right down to the scalp."

"Ah, man…"

But she did it, using a couple of plastic attachments on a barber's clipper, and took his hair down to a quarter-inch, Joe Mack sitting on a toilet with a towel around his neck. That done, she lathered him up and, using a straight razor, gave him the most sensuous shave of his life, not only because he was scared of the razor, which added a certain frisson to the proceeding, but because either her left or right tit was massaging his either left or right ear, depending.

"You think Mikey meant to kill that man?" Honey Bee asked.

"No way," Joe Mack said. "He's just… dumb."

Honey Bee nodded. Mikey was dumb. And violent. Unlike Joe Mack, who was just dumb. Mikey might not have meant to kill the old man, but he probably enjoyed it. Give him a month or two, and he'd be bragging it around, just like Shooter and the black dude in California.

When she was done with Joe Mack, he washed off his face and looked at himself in the mirror. Christ: he looked like a German butcher, big, red, wind-burned nose sticking out of a dead-white face.

"What do you think?" Honey Bee asked.

"Ah, man… Not your fault, though." He rubbed his head. "Bums me out."

She went to the back door, peered through it. Lyle Mack was in the back, moving stuff around. She turned back to Joe Mack, hooked the front of his jeans. "You could come upstairs, later, if that'd make you feel better."

Joe Mack's eyes cut toward the door. Lyle would be really upset if he found out that Joe was screwing his girlfriend. Maybe.

"He's way in the back," she said.

"Yeah, but still…"

"I don't mean right this minute."

"Well…" He stepped close to her, slipped his hand up under her skirt to her underpants. She wore white cotton underpants, and for some reason, that really wound his clock. "That'd help, Honey Bee. I mean, I'd really appreciate it. I'm feeling kinda low."

They backed away from each other when they heard Lyle Mack coming back. Lyle pushed through the swing door, took in Joe and said, "Whoa."

Joe Mack rubbed his head again and said, "I look like I just got out of the joint. I look like they been sprayin' me down for head lice."

"Better'n taking a fall on the old guy," Lyle Mack said. "You know, you look about ten years younger."

"Yeah?"

Lyle Mack turned to Honey Bee and said, "I need you to run out to Home Depot and get some stuff. I got a list."

"I gotta get the wieners started," she said.

"I'll get the wieners. I want you out of here," Lyle Mack said. "Like, now. Don't come back for an hour."

She looked at him for a minute, then said, "More trouble."

"I don't want you to know about nothing, 'cause then you can't get hurt," Lyle Mack said. He followed her around, being nice, gave her a squeeze-she was in a huff-and got her out the door and on the way.

When she was gone, Joe Mack asked, "What was that all about?"

"Cappy's coming over," Lyle Mack said.

Caprice Marlon Garner dreamed of flying alone out of Bakersfield, up through the mountains, straddling his BMW, wind scouring his shaved scalp, sand spitting off the goggles, slipstream pulling at his leathers; and then down the other side, in the night, toward the lights of Tehachapi, then down, down some more and boom! out into the desert, running like a streak of steel lightning past the town of Mojave, blowing through Barstow to the 15, then up the 15 all the way to the lights of Vegas, coming out there at dawn with the lights on the horizon, the losers heading back to LA in the opposite lane…

Pulling up to the city limits, getting gas, sitting there with the BMW turning over like silk, and then boom! back down into the desert, the BMW hanging at 120, the white faces of the people in their Audis and Benzes and Mustangs, like ghosts, staring out at the demon who whipped by them in the dawn's early light…

The ride was the thing. The world slipped away-work, history, memory, dreams, everything-until he was nothing more than a piece of the unconscious landscape, but moving fast, a complex of nerves and guts and balls, bone and muscle and reaction.

And he dreamed of sitting up on a high roof in Bakersfield and looking out over the town, the roofscape, the palm trees and mountains, the hot dry wind in his face. Sitting up there, it felt like something might be possible. Then you'd smell the tar, and realize it wasn't.

And he dreamed of the men he'd killed, their faces when he pulled the trigger. The BMW had come from one of them. He'd put the shotgun to the man's head as he signed the papers, whining and pleading and peeing himself, and when the papers were in Cappy's pocket, boom! another one bites the dust. The Mojave was littered with their bones.

He'd killed them without a flicker of a doubt, without a shred of pity, and enjoyed the nightly reruns…

Sometime in the early morning, the Minnesota cold got to him, and he stirred in his sleep. Eventually he surfaced, groaned and rolled over, the images of California dying like a match flame in a breeze. He'd kicked off the crappy acrylon blankets, and the winter had snuck through the ill-fitting windows, into the bed. He'd unconsciously pulled himself into a fetal position, and now the muscles of his back and neck cramped up like fists.

He groaned again and rolled over and straightened out, his back muscles aching, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and listened: too quiet. Probably snowing again. Snow muffled the sounds of the highway, of the neighbors. He caught sight of the alarm clock. Nine o'clock. He'd been asleep since six, after a three-day run on methamphetamine and maybe a little cocaine, and work; they were all mixed up in his mind, and he couldn't remember.

He was still tired. Didn't want to get up, but he swung his feet over the side of the bed, found the pack of Camels, lit one in the dim light that came through the window shade. Sat and smoked it down to his fingers, stubbed it out and trudged to the bathroom, the old cold floorboards flexing under his feet, the room smelling of tobacco and crumbling plaster and peeling wallpaper. THE ONLY bathroom light was a single bulb with a pull string. Cappy pulled on it, and looked at his face in the medicine cabinet mirror. Picked up some new lines, he thought. He was developing a dusty look, with a slash from the corner of his nose down toward his chin. Didn't bother him; he wasn't long for this world.

Today was his birthday, he thought. One more year and he could legally buy a drink.

He was twenty years old, on this cold winter morning in St. Paul Park.

After coming back to Minnesota, he'd stopped in his home-town, looked around. Nothing there for him. He looked so different than he had in junior high, that it wasn't likely that even his father would recognize him.

But one guy had. A kid he'd grown up with, named John Loew. Loew had come into the SuperAmerica as Cappy was walking out. Cappy had recognized him, but kept going, and then Loew had stopped and turned and said, "Cap? Is that you?"

Cap turned and nodded. "How ya doin', John."

"Hey, man… you really…"

Cappy gave him the skeleton grin. "Yeah?"

"… look different. Like a movie guy or something. Where've you been?"

"You know. LA, San Francisco, West Coast."

A woman got out of a Corolla and came walking over and asked, "John?"

Loew said, "Carol. This is Cap Garner. We grew up together, went to school together."

The woman was Cappy's age, but he could tell she was also about eighteen years younger: a woman that nothing had ever happened to, a little heavy, but not too; a little blond, but not too; a little hot, but not too. She looked at Cappy with utter disdain and said, "Hi, there."

Cappy nodded, threw his leg over the BMW, and asked Loew, "So what're you doing? Working?"

"Going to Mankato in business administration. Finance." He shrugged, as if apologizing. "Carol and I are engaged."

Cappy pulled his tanker goggles over his eyes and said, "Glad it's working for you, John."

John said, "Yeah, well," and stepped toward the store. "Anyway…"

"Have a good day," Cappy said.

Riding away, he thought, Isn't that just how it is? This guy grew up next door, he's going to college, he's got a blond chick, he's gonna get married, he's gonna have kids, and not a single fuckin' thing will ever happen to him. Except that he'll get married and have kids. For some reason, that pissed him off. Some people go to college, some people go to work throwing boxes at UPS.

Minnesota was grinding him down. Before the last cold front came through, he'd taken the BMW for a ride down the highway, and in fifteen minutes, even wearing full leathers, fleece and a face mask, he'd been frozen to the bike like a tongue to a water pump.

He needed to ride, he needed to do something, but he had no money. None. His life couldn't much be distinguished from life in a dungeon: work, a space for food and drugs, sleep, and work some more-with nothing at the end of it.

He smeared shaving cream on his face and thought of California; or maybe Florida. He'd never been to Florida. Had been told that it was lusher and harder than California-meth as opposed to cocaine-with lots more old people.

And he thought again about the liquor store. Big liquor store in Wisconsin, next to a supermarket. He'd been in just before closing on a Friday night, nobody else in the store, and he'd paid $12.50 for a bottle of bourbon, fake ID ready to go.

They never even asked: he looked that old. But more interesting was that when he'd paid with a fifty, the checkout man had lifted the cash tray to slip the bill beneath it, and there'd been at least twenty bills under there, all fifties and hundreds. With the five, tens and twenties in the top, there had to be two thousand dollars in the register.

Enough to get to Florida. Enough to start, anyway.

He caught his eyes in the mirror and thought, Stupid. Every asshole in the world who wanted money, the first thing they thought of was a liquor store at closing time. They probably had cameras, guns, alarms, who knew what?

No liquor stores, Cappy. Have to think of something else.

Some other job.

He was staring at himself, thinking about the bed, when the phone rang.

He picked it up, and Lyle Mack asked, "That you, Cappy?"

Cappy sat in the back of Cherries and looked at Lyle Mack and said, "So that fuckin' Shooter told you I kill people."

"He made it pretty clear. Didn't exactly say the words," Lyle Mack said.

"That could get you locked away in California," Cappy said. "Maybe get you the needle."

"That's exactly the reason we have a problem with Shooter. He talks," Lyle Mack said.

Cappy, his voice flat: "Ten thousand dollars?"

"Five thousand each."

"Then what?" Cappy asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You can't just leave them laying out there," Cappy said. He'd had some experience with the disposal issue.

"We'll… dump them somewhere."

Cap sat staring at Lyle Mack for a long time, his flat crazy-man stare, until Mack began to get nervous, then said, "Fifteen."

"Aw, man, we don't have a lot of cash," Lyle Mack said. "C'mon, Cappy, we're asking you as a brother." Lyle Mack had never contracted for a murder, and he was jumpy as hell. Joe Mack sat next to him and kept rubbing his face, as though he couldn't believe it.

"Fifteen is the brother price," Cap said. "I need a new van."

"You can't get a new van for fifteen," Joe Mack said.

"Well, it's not a new-new van, it's new for me," Cap said.

Joe Mack leaned forward. "Tell you what. I'll sign my van over to you. It's worth that, Blue Book. Perfect condition. Dodge Grand Caravan Cargo, three years old, good rubber, twenty-eight thousand actual. It's got XM radio and a drop ramp for bikes, it's got nav. It'd be perfect for you."

"How's the tranny?"

"The tranny's perfect. Never been a glitch," Joe Mack said.

"I gotta Dodge; it's been some trouble," Cappy said. But he was thinking: Florida.

"Everything got some trouble. But in vans, the Dodges is the best," Joe Mack said.

Cappy stared at Joe Mack, then said, "I'd want to look it up in the Blue Book."

"Be my guest," Joe Mack said.

"And two grand in cash. I gotta eat, too."

Lyle Mack, staring into Cappy's pale blue eyes, realized what an insane little motherfucker he really was.

Then they got practical, and Lyle Mack called Honey Bee on her cell phone: "You still at Home Depot?"

"Just got back in my car."

"I thought of a couple more things we need," Lyle Mack said.

"Run back and get some of those contractor clean-up bags, okay? Like big garbage bags, but really big. And some Scrubbing Bubbles, and, uh, you know, some of those rubber kitchen gloves."

"So when am I the goddamn maid around here?"

"Well, you're right there at the store, goddamnit, Honey Bee…"

They'd sent Cappy down the street to wait at the Log Cabin Inn, and picked him up after Honey Bee got back. Honey Bee would open the bar: "You didn't start the wienies. They're still gonna be cold when we open."

Lyle Mack shook his head. "Honey Bee, I'm just so… busy. You know we've got some trouble. Help me out, here."

When Lyle had gone out the back, and Joe Mack was getting his coat on, he tried to cheer her up by squeezing her butt, and giving her a little leg hump, but she wasn't having it: "Get out of here. Go get busy."

Honey Bee had a horse ranch thirty miles south of St. Paul, though as ranches went, it was on the small side-forty acres. But Honey Bee liked it, and so did her three horses. The Macks were not horse persons themselves; their attitude was, if God had meant people to ride horses, He wouldn't have invented the Fat Bob.

They rode out in Joe Mack's van, so Cappy could hear it run, with the Macks in the front seats, and Cappy on a backseat with a shotgun that he'd brought from home. Joe Mack said to his brother, "I totally know where you're coming from, you know, with this thing-but I gotta say, I kind of like these guys, when they're not being assholes."

"But they're assholes most of the time," Lyle Mack said. "Now look at this. We have a perfect job, big money, no trouble, and now what? Now we're looking at a murder. I mean, fuck me. Murder? And they keep lettin' you know about that eggplant that Shooter killed out in California. You can't sit down and have a beer without them hinting around about it. It's gonna be the same thing here."

"You're right about that," Cappy grunted. The Macks had told him about the bind they were in; not because they wanted to, but because he said he needed to know. "I didn't know him but two minutes when he started ranking me about it."

"So we shouldn't have used them," Joe Mack said.

"Well, you're right. You know? You're right," Lyle Mack said. "We made a mistake. There they were, handy. I shoulda gone, it shoulda just been me and you and the doc, but you know I'm no goddamn good in the morning."

They both thought about that-and the fact that Lyle Mack was too chicken to have gone in-and then Lyle Mack added, "We made a mistake, and now they're going to have to pay for it. I gotta say, it's not fair, you know, but what're we going to do? They'll flat turn us in, if they get in a pinch."

"Bother you?" Joe Mack asked Cappy.

Cappy shook his head. "Don't bother me none, long as I get the van." THEY RODE along in silence for a while, looking at the winter countryside, then Lyle Mack said, over his shoulder to Cappy, "One thing I gotta tell you. If they're sitting on the couch in the front room, it's a purple couch, we gotta get them off it. We can't shoot them on that couch. Honey Bee would have a fit. We need to get them up on their feet."

"Not on the couch," Cappy said.

"It's velour, and it's brand-new," Lyle Mack said. "If we do them on the couch, the couch is toast. She'd be really, really pissed. She just got it from someplace like Pottery Barn. One of those big-time places."

"Okay."

Joe Mack asked, "What do you think about the van? Pretty nice, huh?"

"It's okay," Cappy conceded. He looked in the back. With one rear seat folded, he could get the BMW in there, no problem.

They were coming up to the turnoff, and as they came down off the blacktop onto the gravel road, Lyle Mack said, "Okay, listen, I got an idea." HONEY BEE's house wasn't much, an early twentieth-century clapboard farmhouse with a front porch that was no longer square to the rest of the structure, and a round gravel driveway big enough to circle a pickup with a two-horse trailer. The barn was newer, red metal, with a loft for hay. A detached garage was straight ahead, an exercise ring off to the left.

They pulled in, and the Macks climbed out of the van, opened the side door and took out the big bag of Home Depot stuff. Instead of walking up to the house, they walked back to the barn, talking loudly. Lyle Mack slipped on what might have been a big puddle of frozen horse urine-it was yellow, anyway, and ice-and they went to the barn door and Lyle Mack went inside while Joe Mack waited outside. Joe Mack said to Lyle's back, "I'm gonna be sick. I think we oughta call it off."

"Gone too far," Lyle Mack said. "Just hold on. It's your ass we're trying to save."

A minute later, Joe Mack said, "Ah, shit, they're coming," and Lyle Mack said, "Uh-huh."

Outside, Joe Mack called, "Lyle's looking at one of the horses. Honey Bee's worried that one of them got something."

Lyle Mack heard a reply, couldn't quite make it out, and then, closer, heard Shooter Chapman say, "Horse's supposed to be good eatin.' I saw on TV that the French eat 'em."

"Yeah, the fuckin' French," Joe Mack said, friendly. His face was white with the stress, and he could feel the words clogging in his throat.

Then Haines said something and Lyle Mack didn't understand quite what it was, just that Chapman and Haines were walking up. He stepped outside and saw the two men coming up to the van with its open door, his brother frozen like a statue.

Haines glanced at the open van as he passed and said, "Hey…"

Cappy was right there with the shotgun. He shot Haines in the face and, without looking or waiting or flinching, pumped once and shot Chapman.

Both men went straight down. Cappy stepped out of the van, pumped again, stepped close, carefully, kicked Chapman's foot, looked for a reaction, got none, kicked Haines. Then they all looked around, like they were sniffing the wind: looking for witnesses, listening for cars. Nothing.

"They're gone," Cappy said. "No couch, no problem."

"Okay," Lyle Mack said. His heart was beating so hard that he thought it might jump out of his chest. Chapman and Haines looked like big fat bloody dead dolls, crumpled on the beaten-down driveway snow. Shooter might have looked surprised, but the surprise part of his face was missing, so it was hard to tell. Mikey had a hand in his pocket and Lyle Mack could see the butt of a pistol in his fist. Joe was leaning against the barn, with a stream of spit streaming out of his mouth.

"Look at this," Lyle Mack said to Joe Mack. "They got guns. I bet the motherfuckers were going to kill us. Can you believe that? Can you believe it?"

"Well, yeah," Joe Mack said, spitting again. "They were probably thinking the same way we were."

They looked at the bodies for a few more seconds, and then Lyle Mack said, "Well, I'll get the garbage bags. We won't need the Scrubbing Bubbles. See if there's a shovel in the barn, we should scrape up any ice that's got blood on it."

Joe Mack went into the barn and found a No. 5 grain scoop, which would be okay for the snow, and scraped it away, though it was hard work; the blood just kept coming. Lyle fished the wallets out of the two men's pockets, retrieved the money he'd given to Chapman, and passed it to Cappy. "Your two thousand. It's my money, not theirs. I loaned it to them this morning."

Cappy nodded and took a drag on his Camel. Lyle said, "And don't go throwing that Camel on the ground. You always see in cop shows where somebody finds a cigarette butt."

Cappy nodded again, and Joe and Lyle put on the gloves and together rolled the dead men into the contractor's bags, while Cappy sat in the van door and watched. When they hoisted the bodies into the back of the van, thought Joe Mack, they looked exactly like dead men in garbage bags.

"Don't want to go driving around like this," Cappy said.

"No, we don't," Lyle Mack said. "I know a place we can dump them. I got lost one day, driving around. Way back in the sticks. Won't find them until spring, or maybe never."

To his brother: "Joe Mack, you take their car, drop it off at the Target by their house."

They scraped up the last bit of blood, wiped the grain scoop with a horse towel, and threw the towel in another bag, along with the rubber gloves. "Burn that when we get back to the bar," Lyle Mack said. "Take no chances."

"How far to the dump-off spot?" Cappy asked.

"Eight or nine miles. Back road, nobody goes there. We can put them under this little bridge. Hardly have to get out of the van. No cops, no stops."

"What about the woman that saw me?" Joe Mack asked.

"We gotta talk about that," Lyle Mack said. He looked at Cappy.

"What woman?" Cappy asked.