Wicked Prey

Chapter 5

Saturday night, and Rosie Cruz was driving west on I-494 on the Bloomington strip near the Mall of America and Minneapolis-St. Paul International, a digital police radio on the floor of her car, the illegal software picking up police calls from the major dispatching centers in the metro area. The sun was down and the lights were up, and people were ricocheting through the bars and motels along the strip, putting cocaine up their noses and Wild Turkey down their throats, and Rosie said into her cell phone, "The radios are hot, but they're all in St. Paul. There's some kind of cop rehearsal going on. If you're ready-do it."

"See you back at the motel," Cohn said.

Cruz dropped off 494, up the ramp and across the highway to the south, down the side streets to the Wayfarer Motel, thinking about Cohn and Lane and McCall going into the High Hat with masks and guns.

Nothing she could do about it now. They were ninety-five percent good, five percent in trouble; but she wasn't in trouble. If Cohn and McCall and Lane went down, well, there were more where they came from.

She parked outside the Wayfarer Motel, walked down the side of the first floor, past all the doors, climbed the concrete stairs to the second floor, knocked on 214. The door popped open, and Justice Shafer was there in all his flat-eyed, underfed shitkicker glory. He stepped back and asked, "Anything?"

"Not a thing," she said. "You all sighted in?"

"Ready to go, if we need it." His tongue touched his dry bottom lip. "I'm running low on cash."

She nodded and took an envelope from her pocket, ripped the end off, and thrust the naked stack of bills at him, holding on to the envelope. He pulled the bills free-fifties-thumbed them, and nodded. "How's Bill?"

"Bill's lying low," she said. "There are about a million cops out here." She checked the time on her cell phone. "He's moving around, but he said he'll call you at eight-thirty, or thereabout, if he can get to a clean phone. The last time I talked to him, he was in some roadhouse over in Wisconsin."

Shafer turned to look at the bedside clock: 8:13. "I'll hang around here."

Cruz stepped back to the door. "You keep down, Justice. There's a big chance that nothing'll happen and you can go on your way, no harm done. But you gotta stay sober. If this thing does pop, and the anarchists head in toward the Capitol, we're gonna need every man we can get. Gonna need to take out the leadership."

"I'm ready," Shafer said. He squared his shoulders. "How long should I wait for Bill to call?"

"I'd wait until nine-after that, I doubt that he will. Like I said, things are getting tense. One of these anarchist guys put out the word that he wants Bill's head. They put a hundred thousand on it."

"Ah, man, a hundred grand?" Shafer was amazed by the amounts they threw around. He'd never made more than twelve dollars an hour, except when he was holding up gas stations.

"Stay tight," Cruz said, and she was out the door.

Shafer was a moron, and he was undoubtedly sitting on the bed staring at the phone, but once down in the parking lot, she sat five minutes and watched the door to his room. She'd made a big point about his policing up his brass at the quarry where he sighted the gun in '

Five minutes gone, she pulled on a hairnet and gloves and walked over to his truck and took the key out of her pocket and popped the back hatch on his topper, crawled inside and pulled it down. He'd thrown a plastic sheet over the gear inside, and she pulled it back, spotted the olive drab army-surplus ammo boxes. There were three of them, and she popped the lid on the lightest one and found it half-full of empty.50-caliber shells. She took four, crawled back out of the truck, locked it, and went back to her car.

Looked up at the room: the dummy was still sitting there, she thought, staring at the phone, waiting for Bill. But Bill wasn't making any phone calls to hotels in Minnesota: Bill was in jail in Portland, Oregon.

Cohn, Lane, and McCall had each driven separately to the hotel, positioning the cars for trouble. If the cops got a call about three guys doing a stickup, and saw a car with three guys in it, they might pull a traffic stop to take a peek. If there was no trouble, and they all left separately, they had an extra inch of safety.

The night was warm and starlit, quiet in Hudson, but with traffic building into Minneapolis. At the hotel, Cohn circled the block a half-dozen times, saw Lane's car ahead of him, saw Lane spot a car backing out of its parking place, circled a couple more times, saw a movement, pulled in smoothly, got the space. McCall would have gone to the parking ramp, the other emergency car. The scene was just as Cruz said it would be, people coming and going around the hotel. He walked a block back, could hear cheering in the distance- some political thing in Loring Park, he thought-and turned down the alley toward the hotel's loading dock. McCall was already crossing the dock, Lane behind him. Cohn took a last look around.

This was a danger point-if, for some reason, a cop car went past the mouth of the alley, saw him, and the cop got curious, Cohn was there with a mask and a gun, and that would be hard to explain.

So he'd kill the cop. He'd killed a cop in Houston one time, and never thought about it anymore. Bad luck, for him and especially for the cop. No animus involved. Some black guy went to death row for the killing-more bad luck for the black guy.

Lane and McCall were inside. There were five concrete steps up to the dock, nothing on the dock but a metal Dumpster, two steel doors where deliveries would go in, and a steel door to the left, open just an inch. He walked through it and found Lane and McCall at the bottom of the stairs, their masks in their hands.

"Ready?" He pulled his mask out, slipped it over his head.

McCall said, "All set," but there was tension in his voice. He tended to get more and more stressed until the action began, and then he was fine. He added, "Car's right where we planned: back of the third floor."

Pulled on the latex gloves. Adrenaline starting to flow with all of them now, Cohn could hear them breathing in the enclosed concrete stairwell, as if they'd already climbed the stairs. McCall was wearing the tux and red shirt, his mask rolled on top of his head like a watch cap, an empty FedEx envelope in his hand.

"Ready," McCall said. Lane nodded.

They were fast going up the stairs, their footfalls echoing off the multiple concrete walls that went up nine stories, the smell of raw cement pushing through their masks. They stopped at the door with the red-painted "5" on it, listening. McCall stepped out into the hallway, one hand to his face, like he had a headache. The hall was empty and he pulled the mask most of the way down. He could see the smoked-glass camera dome halfway down the hall. Film only, Cruz had said; no live monitoring.

She'd better be right. But of course she was.

Room 505 was nearly at the front of the hotel and they had to move a long way down the hallway, not quite at a run; found it, knocked with a car key. Felt a vibration from inside.

"Somebody's coming," McCall muttered. Cohn stood between McCall and the camera, and McCall rolled up his mask. From inside, "Yes?"

"FedEx," McCall said. He held up the envelope, so it could be seen through the peephole.

"Just a minute." The door rattled and popped open and McCall turned his face away as a short bald guy in suit pants and a blue dress shirt opened the door, and Cohn was on top of him, flashing the gun, hit him squarely in the center of the chest with his good right hand and the short guy went down and the door banged shut and a young woman in a burgundy dress, sitting on a couch with a carton of chocolate milk, yelped and looked like she was about to scream and she lifted her feet off the floor and Lane was there and he batted the milk away from her like a T-ball, and it splattered across her face and across the curtains and McCall landed on the short man's chest, and hit him once in the face with his fist, breaking the short man's nose, and the woman yelped again and screeched, "Don't do that." Lane put his face six inches from hers and yelled, "Shut the fuck up, bitch," and she shut up, but whimpered, and he swatted her in the face and she went down on the couch, bounced, and rolled off on the floor, losing her shoes.

The short man was stunned and crying and holding the heels of both hands to his nose and Cohn put the gun three inches from his forehead and asked, "Where's the money?" and before the short man could answer, he started counting down seconds: "Five, four," and he pulled the hammer back on the pistol.

The woman blurted, "Behind the bed." McCall went to look behind the bed, but she said, "Not that bed-in the next room," and she began weeping. There was a connecting door and McCall peeked through, and then went through, and a minute later he was back with a suitcase.

Lane was inches from the woman, who was supine on the floor, her side against the front of the couch, and he laughed and said, "Boys, if we got time, I'd like to get a piece of this one," and he reached out and ripped down the front of her dress. She cowered away and Cohn said, almost absently, "Don't have time for a fuck," and Lane said, "She could suck it while we wait'" He pressed the muzzle of his gun against her head and said, "Bet you sucked a little dick in your time, huh, honey?"

McCall was unzipping the suitcase and he said, "Don't have time for that. We could take her with us, though. Get back to the crib, get her airtight, and when we're done, we could rent her pussy out. Make even more money."

The short guy said, "Please don't hurt her," and Cohn snapped and kicked him in the ribs and said, "Say what, fool? Say what? You talking to us? We wanna fuck this bitch up every hole she's got, that's what we'll do, fool."

The short guy groaned and rolled away and Cohn kicked him twice more, and McCall looked in the suitcase and said, "Holy shit," because he'd pulled out two shirts and had found layers and layers of fifty-dollar bills, bound together with rubber bands.

Cohn said, "Let's go. Jim, we'll be five minutes. You wanna stick your dick in her mouth, you better get off in five minutes, because we're outa here in five."

Then Cohn and McCall were in the hallway and as the door closed, they heard Lane say, "You got a pretty little mouth, missus," and Cohn said as they were going down the hall, "The dumb shit got that out of that hillbilly movie."

McCall said, "I felt a little sorry for her. She looked nice."

Cohn nodded and said, "You do what you gotta do, and she's gotta be scared to death."

McCall said, "One thing: Rosie's information was right on."

Cohn chuckled. "Good thing for us."

They went down a flight to 431 and did it all over: but when they kicked the door, a fifty-something, tubby, pasty-faced man with a beard staggered back across the room, and before Cohn could get to him, lifted his hands over his head and said, "Ah, shit. It's behind the bed."

Cohn stopped dead, then reached out and patted the man on the face. "Smart guy."

McCall fished another suitcase from behind the bed, looked into it, and said, "Better and better."

"I knew this was gonna happen someday," the bearded man said. "I told them."

Cohn had been pointing a gun at the man's head, but the fat man, seeming unconcerned, carefully sidled away, and reached out and picked up a glass of scotch.

Cohn said, "Don't call for help for a couple of minutes. If the cops come down on top of us, and I've got to run, I'll call my brother on my cell phone and read him your name and address and he'll come to your house and cut the heads off anybody he finds there. You understand that?"

"They won't find anybody-I've been divorced so many times I rent the furniture," the man said. "Anyway, I don't want to get my head cut off. I'll give you five minutes."

"Even better," Cohn said.

"I told them it was going to happen. Too much money floating around," the man said.

Cohn was backing toward the door. "Five minutes."

The bearded guy said, "Take one of my business cards."

Cohn glanced at McCall, who shrugged. "What?"

"Take one of my business cards. Give me a call once in a while," he said. "You know, couple years from now. A few weeks before the midterm congressionals."

"Why would I do that?" Cohn asked.

The guy spread his hands, rattled the ice cubes in the scotch glass. "Because there's a lot more money than this going around. I know where it is and who's got it, from time to time. I'd want' a third?"

Cohn looked at him for a moment, then said, "Where's the business card?"

"On the table," the guy said.

Cohn stepped over, saw them in a desktop card dispenser. He took a couple, slipped them in his pocket. "I might call."

"I'll keep my eyes open," the guy said.

"You do that," Cohn said. To McCall: "How much money we got in there?"

"Shit, I can't tell. It's stuffed. Fifties and hundreds, just like the other one. All used."

Cohn nodded, then got on his cell phone and called Lane: "G."

He put his phone away, stepped away from the bearded man, then lashed out, hitting the man on the cheekbone below his left eye. The man went down, and then crawled, on his elbows, saying, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus," and then rolled over and looked up, frightened now. The blow had cut open his cheek, and he was bleeding heavily.

Cohn went over to the bag, where he took out as many bundles of cash as he could span in one hand. He knelt next to the bearded man and said, "Sorry-it won't hurt for long. Need the verisimilitude, you know ' There's gotta be fifty thousand in this little pile." He dropped it on the guy's chest. "It's yours. Give it to somebody you trust before you call the cops. Or hide it where they won't look. Maybe in two years, get a real payday, huh?"

He patted the man on the leg, and they left: down the hall, down the stairs, where they met Lane on the way down, out on the street, down to the cars.

As they walked along, Lane said, "I scared the shit out of them." He laughed, a low growl that went huh-huh-huh. "When you left, the little asshole started running his mouth, about how all the cops would be looking out for us, because of how important he is. I picked him up by his shirt and shook him like a baby."

"Didn't hurt him too bad?" Cohn asked.

"No, no. I was careful. He's bleeding, he's gonna have so many bruises he'll look like he's been in a car wreck, but he's not hurt."

"How about the Nazi signs?" McCall asked.

"The chick saw them-I saw her looking at them," Lane said. "Some poor sonofabitch cop is going to spend the next week with his nose in the tattoo files."

Cohn nodded. "Good." And it was good: he had a competent crew.

At the motel, they were like ballplayers after a big win, knuckle-bumping each other and laughing, reliving it; even Cruz, when she showed up, got into it. Then they dumped the money on the bed and started counting: it was all fifties and hundreds, all used, nonsequential, and showed nothing under a black light. Counting took the best part of a half hour, with all of them at it, ten-thousand-dollar bundles, wrapped with rubber bands.

When they finished, Cohn counted the bundles: "One forty-one, one forty-two, one forty-three ' and a half."

Cruz said, "One million, four hundred and thirty thousand, and a half."

"Good one," Lane said.

McCall gave Cruz a squeeze: "You da man."