Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  "Why not?" Lucas asked. He wrote "Dan Oaks" and "Norman" in his notebook.

  Harper was a thin man gone old, but still hard, with shiny cheekbones and killer eyes, two dry wattles hanging under his chin. "Cause I'm not stupid. Some skinhead from Oklahoma shows up on my doorstep looking for.50-cal, the week before the Republican convention? I don't need that kind of publicity."

  ***

  In the car, Lucas called Jacobs again, gave him Harper's name, and the name of the Oklahoma dealer. "I don't know what Shafer's doing, but he sure as hell isn't hiding out," Lucas said.

  "Okay-hey, thanks for the time, Lucas. This has been a help. Could you keep spreading those photos around? We need to talk to this guy."

  "No problem."

  ***

  "All done?" Jenkins asked. He pushed the button on his new switchblade, and the blade jumped out and snapped into place.

  "All done," Lucas said. "You know, you're gonna reach in your pocket for your cell phone and you're gonna hit that button, and blade's gonna jump out and cut your nuts off."

  "I'll give it to Shrake," Jenkins said. "If it cuts.his nuts off, maybe he'll stop dating Shirley."

  "We really ought to do something about that relationship," Lucas said. "I mean, if he won't give it up, maybe put a legal notice in the newspaper, so nobody could accuse us of covering it up."

  ***

  Jenkins dropped him at the office. Carol had gone home, and Lucas looked at all the paper that she'd printed out from New York, on Cohn, looked at Cohn's picture for a while-this was a different personality than Justice Shafer; this was a serious guy-and then slipped it in a file and walked out to his car.

  Great late summer day. He trolled once through St. Paul, looking at all the cops around, saw shoulder patches from Virginia and Illinois. Like a big storm coming in, he thought, everybody watchful and hoping for the best.

  He got home, kissed Sam, kissed Letty, kissed Weather, got a banana from the housekeeper, and Weather asked, "Whatever happened to the assassin?"

  He told her about his day, and she said, "Well, you're done with that, anyway. One less thing to worry about."

  Chapter 4

  Cruz and Cohn spent Saturday morning cruising the Lyman High Hat, a boutique hotel on Loring Park in Minneapolis, a place that featured forty-dollar cheeseburgers and fifty-dollar-a-glass house champagne.

  Cohn, in a baby-blue golf shirt and tan slacks, walked through the front doors, past the desk to the restaurant, past the maitre do", took a quick look around, as though checking for friends, and then walked back out to the car. He'd already surveyed the nearby streets, and the park, stopping now and then to look at a printout of a Google satellite view of the area. He'd seen both McCall and Lane, walking separately, McCall in a neat blazer and pressed slacks, with an Obama button, Lane improbably in cargo shorts and a golf shirt, his hard, knobby legs looking as though they'd been carved from hickory.

  "Let's see the door again," Cohn said to Cruz, when he got back in the car.

  "There's a light and a video camera covering the loading dock; they both record and live-monitor," Cruz said. She was flipping through a notebook with handwritten notes. "The only people who look at the monitors are the desk crew, and they don't have time for it. You won't be breaking in, so even if they see you, they'll think you're staff. You'll wear hats, keep your heads down. You go in, the staff stairway is to your left. No cameras in the stairwell. There are cameras in the hallways, but they're direct-recorders and aren't live anywhere."

  "So if we come out of the stairwell with masks…"

  "You're good. They'll look at you afterwards, but by then, it's too late."

  "Where did you get the uniform?" An idle question: he didn't really care. The talk was his way of nailing down the terrain.

  "Macy's. It's a tuxedo jacket and pants with a red dress shirt," she said. "Now, when you're in the hallway, you'll see the cameras hanging down from the ceiling-they're smoked-glass bubbles, about six inches across. You get to the door, then McCall turns his back, takes off his mask, knocks ' If they look through the peephole, they'll see a black guy with the room service uniform. If they open the door on a chain, you kick it and go in, and McCall pulls the mask back on. If they open it, you go in."

  "What if we meet somebody in the hallway?" Cohn asked.

  "Well, you peek first, see if there's anybody there. We're doing it right during all the big meetings and parties, so there shouldn't be a lot of traffic. There's a big party in the Mississippi Ballroom, so you may get somebody coming up to pee. If you do, well, you take them into the room with you. Holding them would not be a problem: you'll only be inside for five minutes."

  They were headed around the block, and Cohn looked back at the hotel. "Two rooms."

  "Two rooms." Cruz nodded. "After you take five-oh-five, Lane stays with the people there, freezes them. You and McCall go down to four-thirty-one. We do the lower floor second, so if anything goes wrong, we'll get out that much quicker. And four-thirty-one is closer to the staff stairwell. When you finish four-thirty-one, you call Lane on the cell and you all walk."

  They were easing through the tangle of streets between the park and the downtown. Cruz pointed at a parking garage.

  "Two blocks, around two corners," Cruz said. "If we have to ditch the car or if somebody gets caught on foot, we'll have one emergency car here, another one on the street down from the park. We'll have to position that one just before we hit. Everything like we've always done it: keys are with the car, magnetic box under the rear left bumper. Each car has a two-gallon plastic gas can in the back, half gas, half oil. If you have to ditch a car, try to burn it."

  Cohn nodded: of course there'd be emergency cars. And, of course there'd be gas cans. There always were, on his jobs. He adopted any advantage, or possible advantage. That was why he'd survived, and why he worked with Cruz: they saw eye-to-eye on advantages, and survival.

  "I want to see that layout again-we have to know which way to go however we get out, even if we have to throw a chair through a window," Cohn said.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Feels strange," he said, looking back at the hotel, busy, well dressed people flowing around it. "That much cash, with no protection. You're sure about the money?"

  "Ninety percent. That's as good as I can get it. Not as good as with a duck, but pretty damn good," Cruz said. The group had its own slang, and referred to armored cars as "ducks," as in "sitting ducks." She added, "The thing that sold me was, it's so soft."

  They stopped at the mouth of a short alley and she pointed down the alley to a loading dock. "That's the door, off to the left. I checked the key last week. If they changed the lock last night, well, you walk away."

  Cohn looked at the door for a long five seconds, then said, "Back to Hudson." He glanced at his watch, leaned back in the passenger seat, laced his fingers across his chest and closed his eyes. "Check the layout one last time. I want to see the emergency car. Then, do it."

  "You know what worries me the most?" Cruz asked. "What worries me is that the guy might not be there-you know, he goes out for a drink or something. Then you'll have to make some decisions right on the spot. Whether to wait or go, and if you go, whether to come back."

  "You said there's always somebody with the money," Cohn said.

  "That's what I was told," Cruz said. "There's always somebody with the money, until it's gone."

  ***

  They called Lane and McCall, got them started back. At the motel in Hudson, Cohn got a cup of coffee, and then they began working over the drawings of the hotel's interior. "Don't want to meet a busboy carrying food up there," McCall said.

  Cruz said, tapping the drawing, "They use the staff elevator, over around the corner, here. That stairway is mostly a fire escape. I walked it up and down, there's concrete dust on the treads, like it hardly gets used at all."

  "Two weeks ago," Lane said.

  "Nothing's perfect," Cruz snapped.

  "Just sayin'," McC
all said.

  ***

  They talked about the uncertainties. As a unit, they'd always focused on scheduled money deliveries-ATM restockings, armored cars, credit unions in southern auto-factory towns, which carried heavy cash on paydays.

  Of them all, they liked the armored cars the best, because they offered a choice of attack points, and if you found the right armored car, at the right spot, you were guaranteed a major payoff and a slow reaction by the cops. None of them had ever gone after individuals, for the simple reason that individuals didn't carry enough cash. If you're looking at the possibility of years in prison, then the payoff should be worth the risk, they all agreed.

  With the earlier targets, the certainties were large. If the armored car wasn't at point X, and if the local cop cruiser wasn't at point y, then you rescheduled. Credit unions didn't move, and they always opened at the same time, and closed at the same time. If the factory passed out the checks at 10 a.m., then the first guys wouldn't sneak out to cash them before 10:05. Therefore, you had the hour between 9 a.m. and 10:05 to hit the place '

  With this job, they weren't even certain that the money would be there. Cruz said it would be-ninety percent, anyway-but still: with this job, the uncertainties were larger than usual.

  ***

  "The first guy, John Wilson, he's a little guy, but he's got a temper," Cruz told them. "He could give you some trouble. That's the way it is. There may be one or two other guys in the room with him. If there isn't anyone else there, handle it however you want. If there is, you crush him. McCall-use your pistol. Beat him up, get him on the floor, kick his head, kick his balls. Don't kill him, but hurt him. The thing is, downstream, the word is going to start getting out about these guys. If the later targets hear about it, they'll get worried. We need them scared. We need them backing away from us. Makes everything easier."

  "What if they get security?"

  "They won't. They can't have anyone else around when they're passing out the cash. What they're doing is a crime."

  "But'"

  "If they do get a guy with a gun, you'll have to deal with it. But they won't: that's the beauty of the whole thing. The cops finding out what they're doing is worse than getting beat up and robbed. Now, the room. I couldn't get into all the rooms, but I got into a few. I believe he'll have a sitting room with a bedroom off to your right as you go in…"

  ***

  Cruz was about to go on, but there was a knock at the door. She froze. There was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the doorknob.

  "They're not using a key to knock," she blurted. "It's not the hotel."

  "Answer the door," Cohn told Lane. He'd been lying on the bed, now was on his feet.

  Lane went to the door, opened it just a crack, said, "Shoot," and opened it wide. A young blond woman carrying an old-style hard makeup case stepped through, spotted Cohn, cried, "Brutus," and threw herself at him. He picked her up, her legs wrapped around his waist. Cruz shouted at him, as Lane closed the door, "You fucker. You fucker, Brute. Goddamn you…"

  "How are you, Lindy?" Lane asked, and to McCall, he said, "It's Lindy."

  "I'm outa here," Cruz said.

  "Rosie, calm down, okay?" Cohn said, over Lindy's shoulder.

  Lindy said, "Yeah, calm down, Rosie. Jesus Christ."

  "Lindy's just visiting. I'll put her on the plane home in a few days," Cohn said.

  Cruz put her hands, in fists, on her hips, her face a hard clutch of anger: "Why the hell'"

  "Because I couldn't wait," Cohn said. "That's why."

  "Brute…"

  "Y'all get out of here, back in an hour," Cohn said, "or we're all gonna be pretty embarrassed."

  They shuffled out, Cruz running her hands through her short hair in exasperation, and Cohn said, "Better make it two hours."

  ***

  Saturday on the sloping front lawn of the state Capitol, in St. Paul.

  Letty strolled through the crowd, protesters, rubberneckers, street people, vendors, cops, taking it all in. She was a teenager, one toe in senior high, but for two years she'd worked unofficially for Channel Three, an unpd intern. She was sponsored there by one of Lucas's ex-girlfriends-a girlfriend with whom he'd had a daughter, who now lived with her mother and her mother's new family.

  Letty occasionally thought about how tangled it all was-women having children with two different men, men having children with several different women, and she was about to become the official daughter of the only husband and wife who'd ever behaved like parents with her '

  Letty had been born in the bleakest part of northwest Minnesota, the daughter of an alcoholic mother; her father took off when she was a child, and she hadn't seen him since. They'd lived in an old farmhouse outside a small country town, so she hadn't even had the benefit of close-by neighbors. They had no satellite TV, so there'd been only two weak over-the-air TV channels, and she'd grown up as a county library patron, and a reader.

  When she got into school, she'd encountered a man who made his living wandering through the local marshlands in the late fall and winter, trapping fur. He'd taught her how to do it-not much to learn, you could get most of it in a few days of observation-and she'd become a trapper, taking muskrats out of the marshes and raccoons out of the county landfill. That had gone on for most of her elementary school days; she'd taught herself to drive at the same time, and how to avoid the local highway patrolmen. The money from the trapping had become the family's main source of income.

  A tough kid.

  A series of murders had torn up her life: had resulted in her mother's death, and had brought Lucas Davenport and Del Capslock into town. She and Lucas had hit it off almost immediately, and he'd brought her home as his legal ward.

  Cinderella.

  Her job with Channel Three was more than decorative. Lucas's cop pals kept her well-stocked with tips, and since they were always reported by other producers and reporters, her favored reporters did very well with her.

  A woman with a baby, sitting outside a tiny orange nylon tent, smiled at her and Letty smiled back and said, "Hello, there."

  "You can't really be a TV person," the woman said, looking at the credential tags around Letty's neck.

  "But I am," Letty said happily.

  Across the park, in the street, a white van cruised by, the side door open, and a man in a wheelchair looking out at the park-and at her, Letty thought. Just a spark, an impression, their eyes clicking, and then he was gone.

  "How old are you?" the woman asked.

  "Almost fifteen."

  "And you work for a TV station?" She was both amused and skeptical.

  "I've got an in," Letty said. "See, my dad had a baby with this woman'"

  ***

  Lucas wore faded jeans and a khaki military-style shirt rolled up to the elbows. He had a plastic credentials case strung around his neck like a baggage tag, one side with a yellow Session 1 Limited Access tag, the other side with a BCA identification card. Though he was still self-conscious about the camera resting against his chest, and the second one hanging off his shoulder, and the beat-up Domke bag, nobody was giving him a second look. He took a couple of crowd shots, trying to look bored.

  And he was bored. The convention was the biggest single cop-action in the Twin Cities' history, and he was out of it, part of the crowd, and the crowd wasn't doing much. Letty was supposed to be around here somewhere '

  ***

  "Hey, Dad! Dad!"

  Letty was there, under a spreading elm tree, waving. He smiled and headed over. She had a couple of credentials hung on an elastic string around her neck, like his. She was standing next to an orange nylon tent, where a young woman in a tired blue blouse and blue-jean shorts sat on a blanket next to a baby in a papoose sling.

  The woman went straight for his liver: "Are you a cop?"

  He tried for a wry smile: "Do I look like a cop?"

  "Yup." She wrinkled her nose, being funny about it, but the question was serious. Letty broke it up with, "Did you see John an
d Jeff? They were going to give me a ride over to the convention center."

  "What are they doing here?" Lucas asked.

  "Just looking around. They got a car…"

  "Letty…"

  "I know, I know. They're okay," she said.

  "I know exactly what they're like, because they're exactly like I was," Lucas said.

  "Dad, I can handle them, all right?" Fists on her hips.

  "All right. Be careful," he said. He looked around. "Wasn't a march supposed to go off five minutes ago? I need some street stuff."

  The woman with the baby now had bought the cameras. She said, "Nothing is on time. These people couldn't organize a phone call. My husband said he'd be back in five minutes and he's been gone two hours."

  "Yeah? He's a marcher?" Lucas asked.

  "Anarchist," she said. "Or anti-Christ. One of the two. I can't keep them straight."

  Letty laughed and said, "I gotta get a camera in here ' Hey, there they are." She waved across the hillside at two gangling teenage boys, brothers, both with braces on their teeth. One of them, the older one, was a wicked street basketball player, and had nearly taken it to Lucas at the hoop mounted on Lucas's own garage. Lucas generally approved of them, but they were looking. He knew it, and they knew he knew it, and so were careful. "Take it easy," he said.

  "Yeah ' could I get ten dollars?" Letty asked.

  "I suppose…"

  She said quickly, "Twenty would be better."

  He gave her a twenty and she was gone.

  "Nice girl," said the woman with the baby.

  "That sun is nasty," Lucas said. "Is the kid okay?"

  "The kid's fine, but he's sucking the life out of me," she said. "I desperately need a cheeseburger and Mark's got the money."