[Prey 11] - Easy Prey

by John Sandford

"No, no… I just feel… hollow."

  Del shuffled in, said hello, squatted next to the bed, and looked at Marcy. After a minute, he grunted and said, "You're doing okay. I'm gonna stop coming over here every five minutes. You want some magazines?"

  "Not for a few days yet," she said, her voice going weak. She turned her head back straight, closed her eyes, and took a couple of breaths. Lucas thought she'd gone back to sleep again. Then she turned back and looked for Lucas, her eyes going in and out of focus. "Did you meet… that old friend?"

  He nodded. "Yes."

  "You're careful?"

  "We can talk about it next week."

  "You're teasing me…"

  "She's going through her midlife," Lucas said. "I don't know if anybody can help her."

  Marcy said, "Mmmm."

  "Great. Office gossip in intensive care," Black said.

  Marcy asked, "What else is there?" and closed her eyes again. This time she did sleep. After two minutes, Del stood up, looked at Lucas, put a finger to his lips, and tipped his head toward the door.

  Lucas whispered, "We're going… You take it easy," to Black, and followed Del to the door. Outside, Del said, "You remember that Logan guy? The other dealer that Outer gave us, along with Bee?"

  "Yeah, we never had time—"

  "Dope hit him three hours ago—that's the call I got. They got almost a kilo of coke and a couple of sacks of meth. We're doing a little dance with him. Gave him a stack of photos and told him if he could put two of them together, he might have something to deal with. He chose Rodriguez and Lansing."

  "Did you talk to Tim Long about it?" Lucas asked.

  "Not yet."

  "Get with him, figure out a plea, and run it past Logan's attorney. We'll want a statement as quick as we can get it. Today," Lucas said.

  "That's pretty quick, with a lawyer involved."

  "I know. You gotta tell his attorney that there's a short-term expiration date on the offer. Right now, Logan can give us something new. If we find another connection, we don't need his client. If that happens, Logan goes to Stillwater and does the whole enchilada."

  "I'm outa here," Del said.

  Lucas looked at his watch and headed back to the office, stopped again to talk to Rose Marie.

  "What happened with Olson? You tell him?"

  She nodded. "That we've got a candidate."

  "And I'm going to push Rodriguez, see if we can get him to panic," Lucas said.

  "Why?"

  " 'Cause the only case we're going to get against him will be circumstantial. The stuff is starting to pile up, but if we can get him to do something irrational, like dump a bunch of money and run for it, if we can bust him with a plane ticket to Venezuela or something… that'd look good to a jury."

  "All right. We need some public action for the movie people anyway. Ever since Alie'e's funeral was put off, they've been pissed. What are you gonna do?"

  "That depends on Rodriguez. He knows that we're onto him. We'll watch him the rest of today. Tomorrow—I don't know. Maybe I'll go over and talk to him. Maybe bust him for the cameras, haul his ass over here, then turn him loose again. Shake him."

  "Let me know."

  Lucas went back to his office, sat in his chair, put his feet up on a desk drawer and thought about it, and, ten minutes later, walked down to Homicide and found Lester.

  "When you guys cleaned out Sandy Lansing's house, did you get any photos? Albums, anything like that?"

  "A few dozen photos—nothing real recent. Family stuff," Lester said. "We didn't find a camera in the place. Well—there was an old Polaroid in the bedroom closet, but it was so old I don't think you could get film for it anymore."

  "How about video?"

  "She had a VCR and a few tapes, but the tapes were all movies, and some low-rent commercial porn. No video camera."

  "What she do in her life? Everybody's got a camera."

  "She went to parties," Lester said. "And bars. As close as we can tell, that's it. She went out every night of her life. She worked out at a fitness place three times a week. She had about six CDs and a compact stereo that probably cost her two hundred dollars, a medium-sized Sony TV, and the basic cable package. That was about it."

  "We need to tie her tighter to Rodriguez."

  "Gonna have to do it from the other end," Lester said. "This girl was a little strange. As far as I can tell, she didn't have any interests except going out. A million dresses, fifty pairs of shoes, a big collection of costume jewelry. Larry Martin checked the workout club and found out that they use these magnetic cards to check you in. She went Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and all she did was a forty-five minute class designed to keep your butt looking good. So she wasn't even interested in working out. Wasn't interested in music, not interested in TV, had about six books."

  "And no pictures."

  "Not many," Lester said.

  "Did you look at the porn?"

  "No, but Larry did. She wasn't in it. Other than that, it was just standard jerk-off stuff out of California. Hot tubs and swimming pools and blow jobs."

  "Huh. Ever wonder why we live in Minnesota?"

  "So we don't have to put up with that scum," Lester said.

  "What a poop," Lucas said. He stood up and stretched.

  "Scratching for anything, huh?"

  "At this point…"

  Just after dark, with rush-hour building outside the door, Lucas started thinking about dinner; then took a call from the cop sent to watch Rodriguez.

  "This is really exciting stuff," the cop said. "Wish I was plainclothes and got to stand in Skyways all the time."

  "You calling to thank me, or what?"

  "Some dude pulled into Rodriguez's office, he's got a briefcase bigger than my dick, and they sat down and started looking at paper. This dude is pushing all kinds of paper across the desk. I can't tell you anything about it, because all I can see is their shirtsleeves. So, after about an hour, the guy puts all the paper back in the briefcase and comes out, and Rodriguez pulls up his computer and I figure he isn't going anyplace, and maybe I ought to check this other dude…"

  "And you went after the second guy and Rodriguez skipped on you," Lucas finished.

  "Fuck no. I'm looking at him right now. Rodriguez, I mean. Anyway, I followed the other guy into the parking ramp and he gets into a car that's got magnetic signs on the doors. Coffey Realty. I got the phone number off the door and the tag number off the car, and then I ran back to make sure Rodriguez wasn't going away… Anyway, Rodriguez is still here, and he was dealing heavy with a guy from a real estate company."

  "All right. You done good. I owe you a donut or something."

  "Two donuts. With them little sprinkles. You want these numbers?"

  Lucas looked up the tag number for the dealer's car, and got a name and an address. When he called Coffey Realty and asked for Kirk Smalley, Smalley was in, and working. "I need to talk to you," Lucas said after identifying himself. "I can be there before five o'clock."

  Coffey Realty was located on University Avenue just down from the state capital, a block from the Atheneum bank. As he parked his car in the gathering darkness, Lucas made a mental note to check on connections between the real estate company and the bank, then walked up and pulled on the real estate company's door. Locked. There was a light inside, and he knocked. A moment later, a balding man with rolled-up shirtsleeves came to the door, peered at Lucas, then opened it.

  "Officer Davenport?"

  "Yeah."

  "Come on in. I'm Kirk Smalley." Smalley locked the door behind them and led Lucas back to an interior office.

  "Big place," Lucas said as they walked back.

  "We're a pretty good-sized company," Smalley said. "We specialize in commercial real estate, so we don't do a lot of mass advertising. But we do pretty well." He dropped into a swivel chair behind his desk, waved Lucas at a visitors chair, and asked, "What can I do for you?"

  "Are you handling a real estate deal for Richard Rodriguez?
"

  Smalley swung back and forth in his chair, thinking about the question, and then said, "Can you tell me why you want to know?"

  "I can tell you some things… if you're handling a real estate deal."

  "Is this confidential?"

  "If we need your official testimony, we'll subpoena you—you'd have no choice about talking, if you see what I mean."

  "What, Richard Rodriguez is in the Mafia?" Smalley grinned at Lucas.

  "It's serious," Lucas said.

  Now Smalley sat forward. "You've got to keep it confidential, unless you subpoena me."

  "Sure." That didn't sound like enough. "We will," Lucas added.

  Smalley shrugged. "He called me today, Richard did, and asked me how hard it would be to sell off his real estate holdings. He wanted to know how long, and how much. I told him how much depends a little on how long, but if he was in a hurry, we could lay them off on a real estate investment trust in a couple of weeks. But unless we were lucky, he'd take a hit."

  "How big a hit?" Lucas asked.

  "Can't tell. Could be two hundred thousand dollars. Right now, after his mortgages are paid off, Richard could take out a couple of million. If you take two hundred off the top of that, he's down to a million eight. Then you've got to take capital gains and state taxes out, plus our commission. He'd wind up with something like a million three, walk-away."

  "Lot of money," Lucas said.

  "Sure. But that two hundred thousand is purely thrown away—a little bit would go to taxes and commission and so on, but he's basically taking a fifteen percent hit by trying to sell it quick. Two hundred thousand, in the context of a million three, is a big chunk."

  "What'd he say?" Lucas asked.

  Smalley came back with his own question. "Why're you investigating him?"

  "There's a possibility that he's using large amounts of drug money to make up the difference between actual rents, on one side, and his mortgage and maintenance payments on the other," Lucas said.

  Smalley considered that for a moment, then said, "You mean he cooked the books? But he cooked them up? I never heard of that."

  "That's what we think. It's a form of money laundering," Lucas said. "The investigation is in the context of the overall investigation of the Alie'e Maison murder."

  "Holy shit." Smalley was impressed. And he was a smart guy. "You think he did it? Strangled Alie'e?"

  "I can't tell you that—we're conducting an investigation," Lucas said. "So answer my question. What'd he say when you told him about the hit?"

  "He said, 'Sell it.' I said, 'Listen, Richard'—he doesn't like to be called Dick—I said 'Listen, Richard, if you could give us two months,' and he just cut me off and said, 'Dump 'em.' "

  Then it was Lucas's turn to think. After a moment, he asked, "If you'd heard about this investigation unofficially, what would you do?"

  "Do? I'd drop the deal like a hot rock," Smalley said. "We don't need to mess around with Alie'e Maison and all of that. We sure as hell don't need to peddle a couple million bucks' worth of real estate to a REIT"—he said "reet"—"and then have them come back and tell us that we sold them a bunch of cooked books. That's not the kind of reputation you want to build."

  "So do what you want," Lucas said.

  "Drop him? You want us to drop him?"

  "I don't care what you do," Lucas said. "Drop him, if that's best for your company. This is an official call—you'll be subpoenaed in the next day or two. But if you were to call him and drop him, we wouldn't object, certainly."

  Smalley scratched his chin, looked at the telephone, then back at Lucas. "You're using me to fuck with him."

  "I'm just trying to uphold the law, Mr. Smalley."

  "Right. I almost forgot." They sat together for a few seconds, contemplating the law, and then Smalley said, "I'll call him tomorrow morning."

  Lucas took Dale Street down to I-94 and got on the interstate heading west. He was inching toward his own exit at Cretin, then, at the last second, moved back left and continued across the Mississippi River bridge, into Minneapolis, and down south to Jael Corbeau's studio. Lucas rang the bell and a voice fifteen feet away said, "Go on in, Chief."

  Lucas jumped. "Jesus, I thought you were a bush."

  "I feel like a fuckin' bush." Then, sotto voce, on a radio: "It's Davenport." As Lucas pushed through the door, he said, "Tell dickweed it's his turn out here."

  Two more bored cops were sitting in the studio, watching a portable TV that was set up on the floor, plugged into a DVD. When Lucas walked in, one of the cops paused the picture; they were watching The Mummy.

  "Whichever one of you is the dickweed, I'm supposed to tell you it's your turn out there."

  One of the cops looked at his watch. "Bullshit. I got fifteen minutes yet. You looking for Jael?"

  "Yeah."

  "She's upstairs, reading."

  "Is she decent?"

  "Aw, man, don't ask me that. It gives me a hard-on."

  "Let me put you down for sensitivity training. We have it every Saturday morning at six."

  "I'll be there. Count on it." The cop restarted The Mummy halfway through a street riot; it resembled the media scrum outside City Hall.

  Lucas went halfway up the stairs, called, "Jael?"

  She came to the top of the stairs and said, "Hey—Davenport. What's going on?"

  "What're you doing?" Lucas asked.

  "I'm down to reading a book called Natural Ash Glazes. What'd you have in mind?"

  "I don't know. I thought I'd check you out, we could roll around town for a while," he said.

  Her face brightened. "That's the best offer I've had in weeks. If I have to sit around here anymore, I'll scream."

  Lucas told the other cops that they'd be gone for a while. One of them said, "Hang on," and pulled on a pair of camo coveralls. "I'm going to sneak out through the garage. Give me two minutes. Give us a chance to see if anything moves after you leave."

  So they sat watching The Mummy for a couple of minutes, and then Lucas said, "Let's go." Outside the door, Jael took his arm, and the bush said, "Wish I could go." Jael jumped. Lucas laughed and said, "Got me coming in."

  Down the sidewalk, she asked, "See anybody?"

  "No. Don't look around."

  "What if the guy follows us?" she asked.

  "Then we follow him."

  "But what if he's watching from further away, and we don't see him, but he follows us anyway."

  Lucas loaded her into the Porsche. "Not possible," he said.

  They pulled away from the curb, Lucas watching ahead and in the rearview mirror, Jael craning left and right, looking for headlights. "Lots of cars, but I didn't see any headlights come on," she said.

  "So he's probably not around."

  "But what if—"

  "Reach behind your seat there, there's like a black plastic bag…"

  She got the bag, opened it, took out the little bubble light, and looked at it.

  "Gimme it," Lucas said. He look the light, licked the suction cup, and stuck it on the dash; the cord plugged into the cigarette lighter. A minute later, they rolled down the ramp on I-35W and Lucas dropped the hammer.

  The Porsche took off, running through moderate traffic, and a half-mile down, he flipped the switch on the flasher and Jael laughed and the speed went up and Jael braced herself against the dashboard and said, "Now you're showing off," as they went past the 100 mark. They flew along along the interstate, cars ahead of them scattering like chickens. At an open spot, Lucas killed the flasher and said, "No point in advertising," and backed off the speed a notch, bringing it down to ninety-five.

  A minute later, they burned past a highway patrol car that had been hidden behind a Ryder truck.

  "Aw, shit," Lucas said.

  "Highway patrol," she said.

  "Yeah, I know. Stop or go?"

  "Go," she said.

  He went, and the needle pushed past 100 to 108, and Jael said, "He turned his flashing lights on… I think he's comin
g… He's coming, but you're still gaining."

  Exit coming up. Diamond Lake Road. One car at the top of the ramp. Lucas pushed it until the last second, then cut right, took the ramp. The car at the top was turning left, so Lucas went right, around the corner, down a long block, and turned left: He accelerated to the end of the block, turned left again, and rolled down the window. They could hear the siren from the Highway Patrol car, but it was north and then west of them—going the wrong way.

  "They usually turn right if they lose a guy," Lucas grunted. "We gotta get south."

  They zigzagged south and west, past Oak Hill cemetery, under another limited-access road, Jael teasing Lucas as he lurked through residential neighborhoods, avoiding headlights. "Shut up, shut up," he said, and she laughed and said, "Mr. Speed-o."

  They finally made I-694, and Lucas took the car onto the highway, two exits, off, into a bookstore parking lot, part of a shopping complex. "Now what?" Jael asked.

  "We go to the bookstore for an hour, then walk over and get something to eat, and maybe go shopping for a while. Gotta stay off the road for a couple of hours. There aren't that many black Porsches around."

  "What if they stop us anyway?" she asked.

  "Then I he like a motherfucker," Lucas said.

  "I thought cops got free passes."

  "Not if they're showing off for a girl," Lucas said. "I hope you like books."

  She did like books, and disappeared into the Art section. Lucas browsed through Literature, slowed down at Poetry, found a collection of Philip Larkin's stuff, and was reading through it when she snuck up behind him. "Guns 'n' Ammo," she predicted, reaching for the book. He let her have it, and she turned it over in her hands and then looked up at him. "Showing off for a girl, eh?"

  He shrugged. "Not really. I don't read much fiction, but I read poetry."

  She closed one eye and examined him. "You're lying like a motherfucker."

  "Nope."

  "One of the other cops told me you once owned a computer company."

  "Yeah, but it was really somebody else who did the computer stuff," Lucas said. "I just had some good ideas at the right time."

  "That's what it's all about, isn't it? Having the right ideas at the right time." She turned the book over. "You think I'd like him?"