Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  "Yes."

  "Huh." She stood up, took two steps, picked up the phone. "Hello?… Yes, this is Audrey." She turned to look at Wilson. "Why yes, he’s here, somewhere. Let me call him."

  She pressed the receiver to her chest and said, "It’s Susan O’Dell. She said she needs to talk to you right away."

  "Okay. Jesus, I wonder what she wants, right away?"

  "It won’t be good news," Audrey said. She was seized by a sudden dread, looking at her husband’s querulousness. This wasn’t going right.

  Wilson took the phone. "Hello?" He listened for a moment, then said, "Sure, that’ll be okay. Give us an hour… Okay, see you then."

  "What?"

  "She’s coming over. She wants to cut a deal."

  Audrey brightened: "If we can cut a deal, we knock Bone right out of contention. For that, we could offer her quite a bit."

  "That’s right. And we basically agree on-" The phone rang again, and he turned and picked it up, expecting to hear O’Dell’s voice again. "Hello?"

  Again he listened, and finally: "Really can’t until about, say, ten o’clock. We’ve got guests… Okay, we stay up late anyway. See you then."

  He hung up and Audrey raised her eyebrows.

  "Bone," he said. "And he wants to cut a deal."

  Audrey smiled, almost chortled: "My my. Aren’t we popular tonight. Aren’t we popular…" The half a glass of vodka was brightening the world, right along with the phone calls. "We’ve got some planning to do."

  O’Dell came and went.

  Bone came and went.

  McDonald went up to the bedroom, found a bottle of scotch he’d hidden in the closet, ripped off the top and took a long pull. "Jesus fuckin’ Christ," he bellowed. "What’s wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong?"

  Audrey cowered in the doorway. "Are they right? Are they right, Wilson?" She’d been back to the lazy Susan, this time for a full glass of the vodka.

  "That motherfucking Brandt, that traitor," McDonald screamed. He took another long pull at the bottle, two swallows, three, four. When he took the bottle down, he seemed stunned. "How could the fuckers do that?"

  And suddenly he was blubbering, his face red as a stop sign, the bottle hanging by his side.

  "Call your father," Audrey offered. "Maybe he-"

  "Fuck that old asshole," McDonald screamed. "I’m dying. I’m fucking dying." He began pulling at his shirt and when it came off, threw it in a wad on the floor. Audrey retreated to the hall, saw him trot into the bathroom, heard the water start in the oversized tub. A moment later, his trousers flew out the door, followed by his shorts.

  "Wilson, we really don’t have time for this. We’ve got to get ourselves together. Just because they said-"

  "They were right, you stupid fuckin’ cow," McDonald screamed. And he ran out of the bathroom, nude now, his penis bobbing up and down like a crab apple on a windy day. "I’m gone. I’m out of it. I’m dead in the fuckin’ water…"

  He spun around, looking for booze, found it in his hand. He was already drunk: he’d finished half a fifth downstairs before he ran up to get the new bottle. Audrey, desperate, tried to rein him in. O’Dell and Bone couldn’t be right. The job couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be out of it.

  "Maybe O’Dell’s offer, the chairmanship…"

  "I’d be out of there in a month," he shouted. "I’d be nothing…"

  "Wilson, I think if we-"

  "And you, you bitch." McDonald turned, his small eyes going flat as he moved toward her. "You sure as shit didn’t do anything to help. We’ve got some planning to do," he mimicked, quoting her from early in the evening. "We’ve got yellow pads to fill up… And then they waltz in and tell me I’m done."

  "They’re wrong."

  "Shut up," he bellowed, and he hit her, open-handed. The blow picked her up, smashed her head against the doorjamb, and she went down, dazed, tried to crawl away. "You fuckin’ come back here, you’re gonna answer for this." He kicked her in the buttock, and she went down on her stomach. He stopped, nearly fell, caught himself, grabbed one of her feet and dragged her toward the bedroom.

  "Wilson," she screamed. She rolled and tried to hold on to the carpet, then the doorjamb. "Don’t, please don’t." Tried to distract him "Wilson, we’ve got to work."

  "Shut up," he screamed again, and he dropped her foot and grabbed the front of her blouse. Made powerful by the booze, he picked her bodily off the floor and hurled her at a wall. She hit with a flat smack and went down again. "Crazy fuckin’ bitch…" he mumbled, and he took another pull at the bottle. "When I get fuckin’ finished with you, you won’t be able to fuckin’ crawl…"

  TWELVE

  Very early in the morning. Cold, damp, with the sense that frost was sparkling off exposed skin.

  Loring wore a suit that was almost exactly lime green, with a yellow silk shirt and tan alligator shoes, and a beige ankle-length plains duster, worn open. On someone else, the outfit might have looked strange. On Loring, who was slightly larger than a Buick, it was frightening.

  "Now just take it easy in there," Loring rasped. " Everything is cool with everybody."

  They were in an alley on the south side, walking toward a clapboard garage with silvered windows. "Whose garage?" Lucas asked.

  "A friend of Cotina’s. The guy’s straight, they rode together before Cotina got wild. He’s the only guy in Minneapolis that Cotina knew who’d loan them a spot to meet with the cops."

  "Could’ve fuckin’ done it downtown," Lucas grumbled. Loring shook his head: "He’s got those warrants out and he’s paranoid. He says he’s gonna turn himself in."

  "Right," Lucas said.

  "But he’s got some shit to do first."

  "Like peddling a ton of Ice to make bail and pay legal fees."

  "Probably; but it ain’t like the warrants are any big deal. Assault and shit like that."

  "All right," Lucas said. They walked up to the garage and Loring banged on an access door. A man opened it, peered out.

  "Just the two of you?"

  "Yeah, just the two," Loring said.

  The man let them in: he was thin, wore a T-shirt with bare arms, despite the chilly weather. A leather jacket hung on a single chair that sat in the middle of the garage, while a jet-black Harley softtail squatted against the overhead door, ready to run.

  Lucas looked around: "So where is he?"

  "Be here in a minute," the man said.

  "Who’re you?"

  "Bob," the man said. He’d taken a cell phone out of the jacket pocket, punched in a number, waited a minute, and spoke: "Yeah, they’re here. Yeah. Okay." He punched off and said, "They’re just gonna cruise the neighborhood for a minute, then they’ll be here."

  Lucas turned and looked out the windows-the silver film was one-way, so anyone inside could see out, but people outside would see only their own reflection-and after a few seconds of silence, Bob asked Loring, "You still ride?"

  "Yeah, when I can. My old lady’s kind of gone off it, though."

  "You been to Sturgis lately?"

  "Went this year," Loring said. "Pretty decent."

  "Not like the old days, though."

  "No. Everybody gettin’ old."

  "That’s the truth. Everybody’s got gray hair. We look like the Grateful Dead."

  Loring nodded: "Half the people out there brought their bikes in vans, just rode in the last five miles."

  "Were you there the year we burned the shitters?"

  "Yeah, that was good," Loring said.

  Lucas broke in: "This is them? Two red bikes?"

  Bob leaned sideways to look out the window. Two bikers in jackets, sunglasses, and gloves were rolling slowly toward the garage. "That’s them," Bob said.

  The bikers coasted to the side of the alley, killed the engines, climbed off, a little stiff, maybe a little wary. Lucas dropped his hand in his pocket around the stock of his.45, which he’d cocked before they went in. His thumb found the safety and nestled there. Loring’s hand drifted to h
is hip: Loring carried a Smith.40 in the small of his back. A second later, the door popped open, and Charlie Cotina slouched through the door, pulling off his gloves. He was dressed in a plain black leather jacket and jeans, with black chaps and boots. His escort wore Seed colors with a red bandana. Cotina looked quickly at Loring, nodded, then at Lucas, at Lucas’s hand, and then back to his face.

  "Is that a gun?"

  "Yeah."

  "Bet you can get it out of there fast," he said.

  "I took the jacket to a tailor, and had him fix the pockets," Lucas said.

  Cotina nodded, looked at Loring: "This was supposed to be friendly."

  "This is friendly, if you’ve got anything to say," Lucas said.

  "I ain’t got much," Cotina said, looking back to Lucas. "Just this: We didn’t have nothin’ to do with that firebomb. Nobody in the Seed is looking for the cops. Whatever happened to LaChaise and his friends is their business. They was out of the group when they come after you. None of us have nothin’ against you, and we’re stayin’ away."

  "Maybe you’ve got some crazy in the group," Lucas said.

  But Cotina was shaking his head, again looking at Loring: "You know this bunch of fuckin’ hosers: if anybody threw a bomb through this broad’s window, it’d be all over town in fifteen minutes. Nobody’s said shit, which means to me that nobody we know did it. And I been askin’."

  Lucas looked at him for ten seconds without speaking, and Cotina stared back, eyes small and black, like a ferdelance. Finally, Lucas nodded, put his free hand in his opposite coat pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Cotina. "If you hear anything, call us. Might be worth something to you someday… if you ever go to court."

  "Do that," Cotina grunted. And he turned and left, his escort pulling the door shut behind them.

  Lucas relaxed a notch, and Bob said, "It’d be polite to give them a minute to get out of here."

  "Fuck ’em," said Lucas. But he handed a card to Bob as the bikes fired up: "Same thing applies to you. If you hear anything, it could be worth something in the future."

  Bob took it: "Get out of jail free?"

  Lucas said, "Depends on what you’re in for. But could be."

  "Good deal," Bob said. He tucked the card in his hip pocket.

  Lucas nodded and Loring led the way through the door, squinting in the brighter light outside. Cotina and his escort were just disappearing around the corner, leaning into the curve. Lucas bent over and picked up his card where Cotina had dropped it. "Must not want to get out of jail," Lucas said.

  "He had to do it; he’d have to face problems if he kept it," Loring said. As they walked back to the city car, Loring asked, "What do you think?"

  "You’re the expert," Lucas said.

  "I think he was telling the truth." Lucas nodded. "So do I. Which creates some problems. Like, who the fuck bombed Weather?"

  They met Sloan and Del at a northside diner, and Sloan pushed the business section of the Star-Tribune across the table at Lucas.

  "The bank deal has people freaking out-turns out three or four public pension funds own a big piece of Polaris, and if this merger caves in, so does the stock price," Sloan said. "I don’t know if that could have anything to do with Kresge."

  "Don’t see how," Lucas said. He took the paper and scanned the article. Bone was quoted as saying the merger was still on track, and the bank was continuing to work toward the merger. Further down in the article, an unidentified executive said that the merger was being " reconsidered."

  "Snakepit," Sloan said.

  "Yeah, they’re setting up for a fight over there," Lucas said. He pushed the paper back to Sloan and picked up a menu. Everything featured grease. "I bet Susan O’Dell is the unidentified executive."

  "Whatever. But this sounds like pretty heavy pressure to keep the merger going; which would piss off the killer if he was trying to stop it."

  Lucas had been preoccupied by the firebombing, but now looked up from the diner menu and said, "Bone’s the main guy behind keeping it moving… which is sort of odd, when you think about it."

  "Why?"

  "Because most of those kinds of guys dream about being at the top. Running something. If this goes the way the papers have it outlined, the Bone gets the job, he’ll be putting himself out in the cold in a few months."

  "With about a zillion dollars," Del said.

  "Yeah, there’s that… The thing is, should we put a watch on him? If some goofball is roaming around out there, trying to stop the merger, he’d be the next target."

  "Maybe talk to him, anyway," Sloan said.

  Lucas took a call on the car phone, transferred in from Dispatch: "Why haven’t you arrested Wilson McDonald?" A woman’s voice, angry, but under tight control.

  He said, "Who are you? Who is this?" and in the passenger seat beside him, Del took a phone out of his coat pocket and started punching in a number.

  "A person who is trying to help," the woman said. "He almost beat his wife to death last night. You’ve got to arrest him before he kills someone."

  Click. She was gone. Del was talking to Dispatch, but Lucas said, "She’s off," and Del said into the phone, "So do you have a number?"

  They did. "Find out where it came from."

  Pay phone. Up north, off I-694. Nothing there.

  "Who is it?" Lucas asked Del. "She knows everything."

  "Who’d know that Wilson McDonald beat up his wife last night? Especially if they both try to keep it quiet?"

  Lucas thought about it, then said, "Somebody in the family, maybe-and then there’s Mrs. McDonald herself."

  "Anonymous calls-she doesn’t take the rap if her old man finds out about them."

  "Yeah… you remember Annette what’s-her-name?"

  "Honegger: I was thinking the same thing. And what happened to her."

  "Yeah." Lucas bit his lip. "They ever find her hands and feet?"

  "Not as far as I know."

  Shirley Knox wasn’t a particularly good receptionist, but she did know a cop when she saw one. As Lucas and Del climbed out of Lucas’s Porsche, she muttered, "Oh, shit," picked up the telephone, pushed the intercom button, and said, "Mr. Knox-Mr. Johnson is here to see you."

  Out in the warehouse, Carl Knox was standing next to a foot-tall pile of illegally imported Iranian rugs. He looked up at the speaker as his daughter’s voice died away, said, as she had, "Oh, shit," and then, "Wonder what they want?" To the man standing next to him, he said, "I’ll slow them down, you throw the rugs back in the box. If you got time, put a couple nails in the lid. Hurry."

  Carl Knox didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but over the years he’d become the Twin Cities’ answer to the Mafia-or to organized crime, at any rate. He’d gotten his start twenty-five years earlier, stealing Caterpillar earthmoving equipment, a line which he still pursued with enthusiasm. Half of the Caterpillar gear north of the 55th parallel had gone through his hands, as well as most of the repair parts when they broke down.

  He’d done well stealing Caterpillar. So well, in fact, that he’d piled up a couple hundred thousand unexplainable dollars, which inflation-this was back in the late seventies- began eating alive. Then he’d met a man named Merchant, who explained to him the street need for quick untraceable cash, which led Knox to becoming the Cities’ largest primelending loan shark. He didn’t actually shark himself, he simply loaned to sharks…

  And that led to his introduction to gambling, and it occurred to him that you could run a pretty sizable book with the computer equipment he was using to locate the Caterpillar equipment he was planning to steal… and pretty soon one of his subsidiary partners was running the Cities’ largest sports book. But he’d never put any hits out on anyone, and while the occasional broken bone didn’t necessarily make him queasy-especially when the bone wasn’t his own-his Twin Cities attitude toward violence was, "Damn it, that sort of thing shouldn’t be necessary."

  Carl Knox hustled his skinny butt into the showroom. A nice reha
bbed Caterpillar 966 wheel loader was on display, with a fresh yellow paint job, just outside through the big front windows where he could admire it. As he walked in, he saw Del Capslock slouching toward the reception desk, where Shirley was concentrating on her gum chewing. Capslock was followed by another man, bigger and darker. Knox knew both the face and the name, though he’d never met him.

  "Mr. Capslock," he called, a smile on his face. The smile was almost genuine, because Capslock usually wanted nothing more than information. Del spotted him, and drifted over, in that odd street-boy sidle of his.

  "Mr. Knox," he said. He lifted a thumb over his shoulder to the dark man behind him. "This is Mr. Davenport."

  "Mr. Davenport-Chief Davenport-I’ve heard much about you." Knox beamed.

  "And I’ve heard about you," Lucas said.

  "What can I do for you gentlemen?" Knox asked. "A D9 for that gold mine, maybe?"

  "We need you to call up your assholes and have them ask about a firebomb thrown through the window of Weather Karkinnen over in Edina," Lucas said. His voice was friendly enough, and Knox presumed.

  "My assholes? What-"

  "Don’t pull my weenie, Knox," Lucas said, and the friendliness was gone-snap-without transition. "This is a serious matter, and if I have to pull down this fuckin’ warehouse with a crowbar to convince you it’s serious, I’ll call up and get some crowbars."

  The hail-fellow disappeared from Knox’s face: "How the fuck am I supposed to know about somebody gets a bomb?"

  "You saw it on TV?" Del asked.

  "Saw it on Channel Three, they were talking about the Seed coming after your asses again. I got nothin’ to do with the Seed…"

  "We’re off the Seed," Lucas said. "We’re looking for a new angle. So we want you to call up all your particular jerk-offs and tell them to start asking around. You can call me at my office in say… four hours. Four hours ought to be enough time."

  "Jesus Christ, I’d need more time than that," Knox said. "I can’t do nothing in four hours…"

  "We don’t have any time. We want to know where this is coming from, and why," Lucas said.