The Lucas Davenport Collection, Books 11-15

by John Sandford

  Briar bobbed her head, and Letty took her arm and started her across the street toward the hill down to Cedar. “So, how’d you get the name Tiara?”

  “Randy gave it to me. He said, you know, I need a better show-business name than Juliet. He said Juliet was old-fashioned.”

  “Oh!” Letty put on some outrage. “Juliet is a great name. You know that song ‘Romeo and Juliet’? My dad has it on his iPod, it’s an old-timey band. Dire Straits, I think. You don’t know it? Maybe I can get a copy for you . . .”

  AS A CHILD in her time and place, with the mother she’d had, Letty had learned a number of things that would never leave her. She was exquisitely sensitive to social differences: who was rich and who was poor, who was smart and who was dumb, who was succeeding, who was failing. And she’d always kept an emotional distance from people that she’d had to deal with, an observational distance. Jennifer Carey carried the same space—and had told Letty, “You could be a hell of a reporter if you wanted to be. You’re really smart, and I can see you watching.”

  Letty knew what she looked like, and what she looked like was a rich, popular, high school kid. She didn’t have to look like that: she chose to, when she was doing her TV thing. She could also look like a smart kid, which was different, a little less put-together; she could look like a shlump, and sometimes, at home, she did that look, watching, watching, watching.

  Today she was wearing jeans, but they were designer jeans, and her blouse came from a boutique, not from Macy’s. Her sneakers were sleek and cool and olive green, with rust-colored laces; and her sunglasses were small and oval and glittery. She was slender with good cheekbones; she was put together, and she knew it. She could see the weight of it in Briar’s face—the weight of being arm in arm with a rich popular kid.

  SHE GOT BRIAR talking about stage names, and then about clothes, and then about Randy—Briar didn’t want to talk about Randy—and then the other girl, slowing, but not disentangling her arm from Letty’s, asked, “Do you know what I do?”

  Letty gave her another TV grin, one she’d practiced two thousand times. “Yup.”

  Now Briar disentangled herself and slowed. “Is that why you want to put me on TV?”

  “Nope. I’m not going to put you on TV, because that would really mess you up,” Letty said. “I just want to prove to you that I am on TV.”

  “Why?”

  Letty went serious: “Because I’m worried about you. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

  Letty was surprised. Briar looked at least a couple of years older. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Four months.”

  “Ah, jeez.” Letty let the sympathy out. “I’m so worried about you. I’m so worried about what Randy is up to. You know, if he hurt me . . . my father would kill him, maybe. And he’d find out. Randy is dumb, dumb, dumb.”

  “He’s not that dumb,” Briar said.

  Letty shook her finger in Briar’s face. “Yes, he is. If he was a smart guy, you think he’d be living in a shack? You think he’d have gone to jail four or five different times, and he’s not hardly thirty yet?”

  “He’s twenty-four,” Briar said.

  Letty’s eyebrows went up. “Juliet—he’s not twenty-four. Look at his ID sometime, when he’s not around. He’s almost thirty. He lies about everything.”

  Briar glanced back up the hill, afraid again. She looked like a denizen of 1984, caught talking about Big Brother. “He doesn’t always lie . . .”

  Letty said, seriously, “Yes, he does. He always lies. That’s what he does for a living. He lies.”

  Briar looked down at the sidewalk: “Okay.”

  Letty studied her for a moment, then said, “Look, here comes the van.”

  “I really can’t ride around,” Juliet said, but there was a hint of curiosity in her eyes.

  “You have to work?” Letty asked.

  She looked away: “Yeah.”

  “How much do you get?”

  “Hundred.”

  “A hundred? Always?”

  “Not always, but that’s what Randy wants. Sometimes, if I don’t . . .”

  “I saw the stick,” Letty said. “I was in your house.”

  “What?”

  “I saw the stick,” Letty repeated. The van pulled up, and Lois ran the window down. “What’s up?” she asked, checking out Briar.

  “We’d like to ride around for a few minutes, so I can show Juliet some of the equipment,” Letty said. “And I need to borrow some money.”

  10

  LUCAS HAD ONE IDEA, CALLED JONES, the Minneapolis cop, and said, “I need to talk to the victims again. Soon as you can get them together. I hope none of them have checked out.”

  “They’re still here. What’s up?” Lucas told him about the murder of Charles Dee, and outlined the idea, and Jones said, “That could be something. Wilson’s still in the hospital. We can meet there. As far as running around to these hotels—I got nothin’.”

  “That’s ’cause they were in Hudson. How soon can we get these people together?”

  “Soon as you can get here, I guess. That thing about Dee, man—I heard somebody was down, but nobody knew what happened. You sure it’s our guys?”

  “Ninety-five percent,” Lucas said. “Like everything else, though, I couldn’t prove it.”

  “Fucker’s probably walking through Miami International right now, on his way to Brazil.”

  LUCAS ASKED the Hudson chief to keep him updated, said good-bye, and headed west, fast; there was a regatta on the St. Croix, two dozen sailboats beating around in a gentle breeze, and then he was over the bridge and back in Minnesota and on his cell phone, calling Lily Rothenburg at her Manhattan apartment. Her husband answered, said, “Hang on,” and went and got her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “We’ve got a cop down, dead. Cohn did it. Cohn himself, I think,” Lucas said. “He set his room on fire and we’ve got no proof, except that two semi-stoner hotel clerks think they might have recognized him.”

  “Goddamnit.”

  “I put his face everywhere,” Lucas said. “It’d help if you could do the same, out of New York. All the national feeds we can get. If he’s running, we’ve got to make it hard. If he’s still here, maybe we can freeze him, keep him off airplanes, trains, whatever.”

  “I can call some people,” she said. “I can get it on Today, I think, tomorrow morning. Maybe—maybe—Good Morning America. CNN, I’d have to call somebody to call somebody . . .”

  “Much as you can, it’d help,” he said. “USA Today?”

  “Don’t know anybody there. Maybe . . . I might be able to get the mayor to call somebody.”

  “Whatever you can do, Lily.”

  HE FLASHED PAST the outlying shopping centers, slowed coming into St. Paul, worked back and forth through traffic, heading into Minneapolis. He was crossing the Mississippi when his cell phone jangled. He picked it up, looked at the face of it: Jennifer Carey; which meant that it could be Letty, since she used Carey’s phone at Channel Three.

  He flicked open the phone and said, “Yeah?”

  Jennifer Carey said, “I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you. If you let on that I’m the one who told you, I’ll kill you. I’m serious.”

  “If I have to go to court . . .”

  “It’s personal,” Carey said. “Sort of.”

  “All right. What?”

  “Letty took off this morning before I got here,” Carey said. “So ten minutes ago I was talking to Lois Cline . . . you know Lois?”

  “Vaguely. Looks like a pencil with a paintbrush on her head?”

  “Yes. Lois said that Letty has been out trolling downtown St. Paul, looking for a hooker, who she said was a classmate,” Carey said. “Lois wasn’t really sure if she was telling the truth, but warned her not to mess around with any hookers.”

  “Aw . . .”

  “That’s not the good part, yet. An hour later, Letty flagged h
er down, and she’s got the girl with her. Sure enough, this other kid’s a hooker,” Carey said. “Letty even got her talking about it. You know, the street. Letty’s idea, apparently, is that she could interview an underage hooker about giving blow jobs to Republicans.”

  Lucas thought he felt a vein pop out in his temple. “Aw, for Christ’s sakes.”

  “Hey. She’s got the eye and she’s got the balls,” Carey said. “And she’s apparently got the source.”

  “Aw, sweet bleedin’ Jesus,” Lucas said. “Where is she?”

  “Downtown St. Paul, somewhere,” Carey said. “You’ve got her cell phone?”

  “Yeah. Have you tried it?”

  “No, because then she’d know that I was the one who told you,” Carey said. “I rather she didn’t know that.”

  “Okay. Good-bye. Hey—thanks.”

  LETTY ANSWERED on the third ring. “Hello, Dad?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Up at the Capitol,” Letty said. “The big march is about to start, there are about a million people, I’m watching these black-flag guys . . .”

  “Go home,” Lucas said.

  “What?”

  “Go home. I’m going to call your mom to pick you up,” Lucas said.

  “I’m on my bike,” Letty said. “But I can’t go right now.”

  “Letty, go right now.”

  After a long silence, Letty asked, “Who told you? Lois?”

  “Just go home, Letty,” Lucas said.

  “Bullshit. I’m going to march with my bike,” she said. “I might not ever get to do this again for the rest of my life. Then I’ll go home. I’m not with Juliet anymore.”

  “Letty, goddamnit . . .”

  “I’m turning off my phone,” she said, “Since you can’t seem to handle this in an adult manner.” She was gone.

  THE WOMEN in Lucas’s life reduced him to a chattering-chipmunk state about once a month. If not Letty, then Weather; if not Weather, then Jennifer Carey, mother of his other daughter; if not Carey, then Elle Kruger, a nun and lifelong friend; if not her, then Carol, his secretary. They were, he sometimes thought, when he had time to think about it, all crazier than a barrel of hair. All of them together, and also taken as individuals. But this, he thought, took the everlasting triple-decker chocolate-fudge cake.

  He was already rolling into downtown Minneapolis, thinking about the best way to get turned around to head back to St. Paul, when it occurred to him that if he went back, he (a) wouldn’t find her in the crowd, and (b) if he found her, what would he do with her bike? He was driving a Porsche, and (c) if he did find her, would he try to force her into the car? Knowing Letty, she’d probably start screaming for help.

  Well, maybe not that. She’d just be . . . disappointed in him and she’d probably cry. That would break his heart.

  Besides, she said she wasn’t with the hooker anymore. She didn’t usually lie to him, though she did sometimes. She was the toughest kid he’d ever met, and also the most levelheaded.

  Still. He took a deep breath, relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. “Hell to pay when I get home,” he muttered to himself. He stopped looking for a place to turn around, and headed into the Minneapolis loop.

  JOHN WILSON was sitting upright in bed, his bludgeoned left eye unwrapped and looking like he’d been hit with an electric sander. He’d just gotten a strawberry shake when Lucas arrived, and was sucking a blob of whipped cream through a straw. Jones was leaning against the air conditioner and said, “Hey.” Wilson’s assistant, Lorelei Johnson, and Bart Spellman, the third victim, were propped in bedside chairs.

  Lucas told the three of them about the murder of Charles Dee: “You guys were pretty lucky, in a way,” Lucas said. “They banged you around a little, but now they’ve killed someone. We know it and they know we know it. The next people who run into them might not be so lucky.”

  “So Rick said you had an idea,” Wilson said, nodding at Jones.

  Lucas put a finger to his lower lip, thought a moment about how to lay it out, then said, “Okay. Somewhere back down the line—days ago, weeks ago—somebody gave Cohn information on where you’d be staying, when you’d be there, how much money you’d be carrying, and probably, how long you’d be carrying it.”

  Quick series of glances, but Lucas held up his hand and said, “Hold on . . . I’m not asking for a statement, I’m speculating on how this must have happened. Somebody knew those things and could point Cohn at you. The question is, who would have that information, on both of you? The details of where you’d be staying?”

  Wilson and Spellman looked at each other, frowning, then Johnson suggested, “Travel agency?”

  Wilson said to Spellman, “We use Dole,” and Spellman shook his head. “I did mine online, direct with the hotel.”

  “How about the hotel?” Wilson asked.

  Johnson frowned, shook her head: “How would they know about the money?”

  “How about some kind of lobby group back in Washington?” Lucas asked, but Johnson waved him off.

  “No, no, no, that wouldn’t be it . . . You get all kinds of talk, who is going with who, who is staying with who, but you wouldn’t get room numbers.”

  “People would tell people . . . you guys probably told people where you’d be staying,” Lucas said.

  “Yeah, but how would one person gather all the names up, with hotels?” Johnson asked.

  Spellman said, “They’ve only got two. That’s not a lot.”

  “Two for now—but I expect there’ll be more,” Lucas said. “The money’s too easy. Plus, we think they need more money than they’ve gotten. The New York cops think Cohn’s trying to retire, and the money gets cut up between several people.”

  Jones jumped in: “Do you remember anybody chatting you up, about where you were staying, and all that? Who was with who? Somebody unusual, who you might not normally have been talking to about it?”

  They all shook their heads. Wilson said, “I didn’t talk to anybody about it. I mean, people know about me and Lorelei . . .”

  Johnson looked at Lucas and said, “I’m not entirely unmarried. Almost, but not quite, so we don’t talk about traveling together.”

  Lucas nodded. “Okay.”

  Again, Spellman and Wilson looked at each other. Spellman finally said, “You know, there are a certain number of guys who know each other, like I know Johnny here. One of those guys could probably make you a list.”

  “If they had names, they could get room numbers—they could just do a social hack,” Wilson said. To Lucas, “A social hack . . .”

  “I know what it is,” Lucas said.

  Jones said, “So you think they got a list, and then they bullshitted people into giving them room numbers? Like bellmen or desk clerks or wives or whatever?”

  Lucas: “No. Couldn’t be that way. Had to be back in time. Days ago, or maybe weeks. Cohn flew in from England, where he’d been hiding out. And it was all planned—they were ready to go as soon as they got here. They had a guy in a room-service uniform, that was specific to the High Hat. Their whole method of operation, the way they’ve done things in the past, and now this time, suggest it was all carefully planned. The hotel was scouted. They knew the route in and out. Then when we unexpectedly popped them at their motel, they had a can of gas on hand and burned it down.”

  “Jesus,” Spellman said. “You’re starting to scare me . . . But—they had to get the room numbers at the last minute. I didn’t know what my room number was until I checked in, and I only checked in about six hours before they robbed me.”

  Johnson said to Spellman, “Not necessarily. Did you get a special rate through the hospitality guys?”

  Spellman said, “Yeah, the standard.”

  “So did we,” Wilson said.

  Johnson said to Lucas, “The Republican hospitality committee would know where we were. They assigned rooms. They’d have a block of rooms, and a chart they’d fill in, depending, you know, on your status. What you do. If you
’re like us, you get a pretty nice room, but not right in with the delegates. Somebody on the committee had to know who was who . . .”

  “You know that for sure?” Lucas asked.

  “I used to do it, for car-sales association conventions,” she said.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lucas said. “Now we’re getting somewhere . . .”

  He pushed the three of them to come up with more organizations that might have the information, but they had no ideas. “I think . . . the hospitality committee. That’s about it,” Johnson said.

  Jones said to Lucas, “Since they only hit people in the same hotel, it’s possible that there’s somebody inside the hotel. Maybe they got a reservations list, looked them up, marked down the people who worked for lobbyists, and went from there.”

  Lucas nodded: “You’re right: that’s a possibility. You chase that down, I’ll run down the hospitality committee.”

  LUCAS CALLED Dan Jacobs at the convention security committee: Jacobs came on the line and said, “I was about to call you. We need you to go back and look for Justice Shafer again.”

  Lucas had virtually forgotten about Shafer, the guy with the .50-cal. “I got people looking for him all over two states and I can spread it out to Iowa, if you want. I won’t be able to do much personally.”

  “We had something come up,” Jacobs said. “Two hours ago, a Mexican guy—an illegal, God bless his soul for reporting it—was cutting a hedge behind one of those big houses up on Summit Avenue, right where the hill drops off. He trims it up once a month or so. So today he’s cutting it, and he finds a couple of nice shiny .50-cal shells in the grass behind the hedge. He looks down the hill, sees the convention center . . . and calls his boss, who called us. The Mexicano says the shells weren’t there when he cut the hedge last month. Said they were sitting right out in the open. Says he didn’t touch them, and we can see some smudging, so we might get prints . . .”