Wicked Prey

Chapter 6

In the years they'd been married, the telephone rang in the bedroom once too often, so they finally took it out. At five o'clock Sunday morning, when the phone started ringing, Lucas had been asleep for four hours. Because of the convention, he got up and staggered out through the living room to the nearest portable and looked at the caller ID. Nothing but a number, but he recognized the number. "Yeah."

"Can you come down to my office?"

"Right now?"

"That'd be good."

"Half hour?"

"Okay."

Who was that?" Weather asked. Sunday was her day to sleep in.

"Neil Mitford." Mitford was Governor Elmer Henderson's executive assistant, chief weasel, confidant, fixer, and maybe bagman. He'd been in Washington for the fight over the Homeland Security arrests.

"What'd he want?"

"Dunno," Lucas said.

She went back to sleep and Lucas stared in the bathroom mirror for a couple of minutes, trying to get his eyes open, then shaved, brushed his teeth, stood in the shower and let hot water beat on the back of his neck. Toweled off, he got dressed: jeans, a blue T-shirt, walking shoes, sport coat, Colt Gold Cup.45. On the way out, he remembered the convention credentials, got them off the dresser, slipped them into his pocket with his ID. The cameras were still in the car.

Feeling tired, but not bad; and the morning was perfect, cool, crisp. August was Minnesota's most perfect month, and this was the final day of it. September might be fine, too, but not perfect. Sometimes, they saw snowflakes in September.

He rolled the Porsche out of the garage, yawned, headed through the quiet city streets out to I-35Every, the car's exhaust burbling along, north to the Capitol. When he got there, he took a lap around it, to see what was going on, if anything. A speaker's shell had been set up on the Capitol lawn, for an antiwar rally later in the day. A few people in message T-shirts were wandering around, two of them smoking, and a kid was going through a garbage can, looking for something to eat. He drove back up the hill, parked in the state garage behind the Capitol and walked down to the building, flashed his ID at a Capitol guard, and continued up to Mitford's broom closet office. He knocked, tried the door, but it was locked, and he heard Mitford call, "Hang on."

"It's Lucas."

Mitford came to the door buttoning his pants, the belt undone. He was in a day-old undershirt and stocking feet, unshaven, beat up. He said, "Come on in," his voice creaking. He looked up and down the hall, then closed the door and locked it. A blanket lay on the floor next to the couch; he'd been asleep. "Got a big problem," he said.

Lucas nodded: "Yeah, I guess. It's not even six o'clock."

"I've been up all night'" Mitford walked around his desk and sprawled in his chair, pointed Lucas at the visitor's chair. "A hurricane is coming into New Orleans, probably going to flatten the place again. McCain may not come, the president and vice president have canceled, the whole thing is going up in smoke."

"Plus they're already pissed at your boss."

"There's that, but that's a good thing," Mitford said.

"So…"

"So three people got robbed at gunpoint in the High Hat last night," he said. "One of them's still in the hospital, one's a woman, she's still freaking out because the robbers threatened to take her with them, supposedly to gang-bang. The Minneapolis cops have all the information, but I want you to talk to them."

"How much did they get?" Lucas asked.

Mitford held up a finger. "They were violent, intimidating. Hats and masks and gloves. One white guy, one black, one undetermined- the white guy had swastikas tattooed on his wrists. In and out, and gone."

"How much?"

"Not much ' a few hundred dollars ' four-fifty, maybe."

Lucas waited for the rest of it. Mitford didn't call him in for a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar armed robbery.

Mitford didn't get the reaction he expected, so he said, "Listen, you've been around. Political campaigns take all kinds of donations. Some of them, people don't want to know about. They tend to be in cash, for street-workers, canvassers…"

"Vote buyers…"

"Whatever," Mitford said. "But we don't really buy votes-it'd cost too much."

"How much?"

"I'm not sure exactly," he said. "I'd guess ' a million-two? A million-five? Depending on how much they'd already moved."

"In cash?"

"Mmm'"

"Small, used, unmarked bills?" Lucas asked. Of course they would be.

"Mmm. In Philly they call it street money."

"So what's the problem? Put the cops on it," Lucas said. "Hell, it's a bunch of Republicans. If the news leaks…"

"Nice thought, but I'm afraid that some of the people with, you know, this kind of cash, uh, might have been in Denver a couple weeks ago," Mitford said. The Democratic convention had been in Denver.

"Ah, man."

"And these guys can't really talk about it," Mitford said. He was all but wringing his hands. "Somebody, you know, could point out that moving this much money around might constitute some kind of infraction."

"Infraction? They'd be on their way to Club Fed if the word got out," Lucas said.

"Maybe. So they won't complain, they won't talk, they won't say anything to anybody they haven't been ' reassured about," Mitford said. "They filed robbery reports to cover themselves with their bosses, so nobody would think they skipped with the cash. One of the guys really got the shit beat out of him. But they won't talk."

"So, if they won't complain ' that's life," Lucas said.

"The problem is, there's probably twenty guys like this in town," Mitford said. "The robbers knew exactly where to hit, where to go ' one of them was wearing a High Hat room-service uniform."

"You think they'll do more?"

"Why not? If you've got the information, it's easy pickings," Mitford said. "These guys are like accountants, pencil-necked geeks with sugar money, ethanol money, oil money, automobile money, union money ' they don't know from robbery. They've got no security, because they can't afford to have other people know what they're doing. But these robbers, man-they're crazy. They must be coked up, cranked up, something. They beat the shit out of this one guy."

"Could be a technique," Lucas suggested.

"Yeah?" Mitford was interested.

"Get on top of people, intimidate them, scare them so bad that they won't resist," Lucas said. "Pro robbers'll do that, get on top and stay on top. Of course, some of them just like to hurt people."

"Can you take a look at it?"

Lucas shrugged. "Sure, I'll take a look. But I'm not going to jail. If somebody mentions big money, I'll make a note."

Mitford sighed and shook his head, turning, and looked at a blank wall, where, in most offices, there'd be a window. "When we went with you, there was an argument. We knew you were flexible, because you've always operated that way. But you've got so goddamn much money, the question was, were you flexible enough? Some guys, most guys, can't tell us to go fuck ourselves."

"I'm not telling you to go fuck yourself," Lucas said. "I can call you a confidential informant, that doesn't bother me. But I'm not a cover-up guy. There might come a time when I've got to go public with it. But not necessarily…"

"Not necessarily…" Mitford gnawed at a fingernail, spit a piece of nail at his wastebasket. "Well' take it easy. If you really get in a crack, and have to make a record, let me know ahead of time. Let me get a jump on the PR. But I'll tell you, I know for sure that none of these people will admit that they had the cash."

"So why do anything?"' Lucas asked. "Why not call it a day and go home?"

"Because they're some of us," Mitford said. He patted himself on the chest. "Us political guys. We're like cops. Everybody hates us, so we've got to take care of each other. And I really don't want to see anybody get killed by these assholes."

"If I get them, if there's a trial'"

"I'll worry about that when I get to it," Mitford said. "Prosecutors are politicians-plea bargains are out there, things can be done. But right now, Lucas: stop them."

Lucas just looked at him for a moment.

Mitford pushed some paper across his desk. "Names, room numbers, cell phones. Please?"

"I'll take a look," he said.

"And ' one more thing," Mitford said. "Keep it to yourself? Much as you can?"

Lucas went back home, got undressed, crawled into bed, and went back to sleep. He woke again when Weather got up. She pulled a drape halfway back, and a shaft of sunlight cut across the room. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Need to talk," he said, rolling onto his back.

"Uh-oh. What happened?"

"Get cleaned up, then I'll come brush my teeth and we can get some coffee."

Seven o'clock, and quiet, though they'd all be up soon enough. Weather usually got up at five-fifteen on weekdays, and was at the hospital by a little after six: sleeping to seven o'clock was a weekly treat. Lucas rarely got up before nine o'clock, rarely went back to bed before 1:30 or two o'clock. He got up with her Sunday so they could get an hour together with a little quiet.

They got coffee going, and oatmeal, and some ready-made hot-cross buns from a can, and odors mixed pleasantly across the kitchen. When she sat down with the coffee, he told her about the robberies, about the no-tell cash.

"So Neil wants you to catch these people, or at least stop them, without telling anybody about the money," she said.

"That's about it," Lucas said.

"Why'd he tell you about the money? He could have asked you to look into it, without telling you about it," Weather said. "He could have told you that these people were important, or were political friends, and that would have kept you out of it, ethically…"

"He knew I'd find out," Lucas said. "He wanted to be able to predict what I'll do."

"All right."

"The thing is, I already have an idea who they might be. They might be some guys who killed a couple of cops in New York."

He told her about the Friday call from Lily Rothenburg. She'd heard a story from Del or Sloan about Lucas and Lily and the front seat of an earlier Porsche; she said now, "Old Bucket Seat."

Lucas rolled his eyes, "C'mon. It was years ago. She's married and has a family…"

"You never tried to get me in the Porsche…"

"At our age, we'd have to take a year of yoga first," Lucas said. "Anyway she called to tell me that there's this heavy-duty stickup gang in town. They only go for large amounts of cash, and they're good at it-always work off a plan, bold, but very careful. This sounds like them."

"Then you've got a problem," Weather said. "You're going to have to bring some other people in on the deal. Other cops. You can't go up against them by yourself. Then you've got to tell the other guys."

"That can be handled," Lucas said. "Cohn might be down in Texas by now. On the other hand, he might have a list. If I can spot the gang, there'd be no problem bringing in a SWAT team to take them down. I mean, there're already two robberies on the table. Formal complaints, one guy in the hospital. It's more ' You know, if I do this, I'm sort of one of them. The political guys."

"You already are," Weather said.

He wagged a finger at her. "No. I've taken assignments that had a political component, but the assignments were legit. You know, chasing down some asshole because Henderson owes some sheriff a favor. This is different-I know about a pretty serious crime. I'm going to have to ignore it. Probably."

"You've ignored crimes before," Weather said. "When we got Letty, all those nuns were bringing illegal drugs across the border. You knew about it and let it go."

"There was a certain morality involved, there," Lucas said. "I was on the right side of it. One of the women said, you know, they weren't smuggling illegal drugs-the drugs were legal both here and in Canada. What they were smuggling was illegal prices. They were doing right, even if it was against the law. These people, this money ' you know, they're going to buy votes or something."

Weather said, "I can't help you on the morality thing. I can give you something to think about-whether or not there's all this money involved, you've got a lead on a gang that killed some cops. It's worth bringing them down no matter how much money might be involved."

"What do I tell the Minneapolis guys?"

"Tell them ' something's going on. Something's going on, and that this gang sounds like the gang that Lily Bucket Seat was talking about."

Lucas thought about it: "Okay, you're right. If this is Lily's gang, they need to be taken down. But I've got to tell Minneapolis something-I can't send them up against Cohn without knowing."

She nodded: "There's gonna be some tap dancing, though. You won't get through this without your best Fred Astaire."

Letty wandered into the kitchen, wrapped in a ratty blue terry-cloth robe, looking sleepy, rubbing one hand through her tangled blond hair. "Smells good," she said. "God, I need some caffeine."

Lucas grinned at her and said, "Long night?"

"I should have read it last month ' Is there any Coke?" She opened the refrigerator and peered inside. She'd been assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird over the summer, and to write a paper on it, and had let it go until the last minute.

"How much more do you have to read?" Weather asked.

"Eighty pages," she said, twisting the cap off a bottle of Coke. "But I've got to get over to the station. I'm getting a camera, I'm going to do a piece on the kids up at the Capitol. I mean, like, you know, people my age in politics."

Lucas dropped his eyelids and made a snoring sound, and Weather snapped: "Lucas!"

"Ah, he's right," Letty said. "Another thumb-sucker. But, I get the camera time. The kids at school freak out. Emily Grissom can't stand it. She thinks I'm sleeping with somebody over there."

"Ah, God," Weather said, outraged. "Letty, do you really have to do this stuff? You could be a surgeon, or-well, you probably wouldn't want to be a lawyer…"

Lucas stood up, kissed Weather on the forehead, and said, "Thanks," and "Counsel your daughter," and headed out the door.

As he went, he heard Letty ask, "Mom, could you give me a lift over to the station? I need to get there early…"

A Minneapolis cop named Rick Jones had caught the robberies. Lucas found him at the Dairy Delight, a downtown ice-cream stand modeled after a Dairy Queen, getting a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone. Jones was a tall, slender black man with a shaved head and a diamond earring. He not only thought he looked like a pro basketball player, but he actually did. He was wearing jeans, a loose gray army T-shirt, running shoes, and dark wraparound sunglasses.

"Lucas motherfucking Davenport," he said, as Lucas wandered up.

"That'd be mister motherfucking Davenport to the likes of you," Lucas said. He checked the menu behind the Dairy Delight window, ordered a small hot fudge softie from the girl behind the counter, and said to Jones, "I was just over at the office. They say you caught those robberies at the High Hat."

"Yeah. I said to myself, "RJ, there's something going on here that you don't know about." And guess what-here comes Davenport."

"Well, you're right about that," Lucas said. "I got my ass jerked out of bed by a guy who works for the governor. These folks were here for the convention…"

"That's what they told me," Jones said.

"… representing some big-time special interests. They get hit, they start making phone calls. I don't like it any better than you do, but they did get hit."

"They lied to me about it," Jones said. "I asked them how much was stolen, they said, you know, "hundreds of dollars." I was like, right-you're in a six-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel suite, and they got your money clip."

Lucas didn't try to deny it. "Anyway…"

Jones was crunching through the chocolate, dabbed his lips with a napkin, and said, "So they sent you along to put a wrench on my nuts."

"No, they sent me along to look into the robberies on my own. I talked to Danny…" Danny Lake was the head of robbery-homicide, "… and he said I could sit in. The thing is…"

The counter girl passed Lucas his hot fudge and a plastic spoon, and Lucas paid and they ambled down the street. "… The thing is, it's possible that I got a line on these guys."

Jones's eyebrows went up. "How'd that happen?"

"An old friend called me from New York. Nothing to do with politics, she just called out of the blue," Lucas said. He outlined what Lily Rothenburg had passed along, and mentioned the Photoshopped mug shots.

"You got these pictures?" Jones asked.

"Got them, but I haven't printed them," Lucas said. "Everybody's working this weekend, so I can get that done right away. I wanted to check with you first, so, you know-I don't step on your feet."

"I'll tell you what, I don't mind too much, you looking over my shoulder," Jones said, serious now. "Maybe some other time, I'd mind. But right now-everybody's used up. If we're gonna run these around to the hotels and motels, it's gonna be you and me. Everybody else is working the Republicans."

"I could probably get one guy to help out," Lucas said. "I can e-mail you the jpegs, you can pass them out on this side of the river, I'll take the other side."

"It's something. You wanna talk to the victims?" Jones asked.

"Yeah-but I wanted to talk to you first," Lucas said.

"I knew something was up with them," Jones said. "You got any idea how much these assholes really took?"

"Nobody talks about money-but these guys, Brutus Cohn, whoever, they don't steal four hundred dollars and an engagement ring," Lucas said. "They know what they're doing."

"Fuckin' Republicans," Jones said.

"Yeah, well-I was told that these guys were in Denver last week," Lucas said.

"Way of the world, baby," Jones said.

Lucas wadded up the hot-fudge sundae cup and tossed it at a trash basket. Hit the rim and went in. "Brick," Jones said.

"Brick my ass," Lucas said. "With my skills, looks, intelligence, and speed, and your tennis shoes, we coulda been in the NBA."

Jones laughed and said, "Well, maybe. If you could jump more than four inches off the ground. You wanna walk over to Hennepin? We could talk to Wilson again, if he's awake."

"Let's go. And fuck a bunch of jumping. With my skills, you don't need to jump."