“What about the photography—the British photography?” Lucas asked. “The pictures might be better than the Photoshop stuff you sent me.”
“They’re not,” Lily said. “The film was good enough to track him, but it’s kind of grainy black-and-white. I’ve seen it—our Photoshop stuff is better.”
“Well, we’ll push it,” Lucas said. “I got yanked out of bed by one of the local political hotshots, and he wants this fixed. Quietly.”
“I don’t care how it’s fixed, as long as Cohn’s clock is fixed at the same time,” she said.
CAROL CAME BACK with a list of hotels. “I talked to Jones. He’ll take care of Hennepin County. I’ll e-mail the Cohn photographs to Bloomington, and the sheriffs’ departments in Dakota and Washington County, and across the St. Croix to Hudson and River Falls and Prescott. So, you’ve got St. Paul.”
“Do we actually have people walking them around, or are we dropping them in a black hole?” Lucas asked.
“I’ve got commitments,” Carol said. “I’ll call them every hour or so to get reports. Though, there are quite a few cops from the suburbs already here in St. Paul, working the convention.”
“Hell, it’s one guy walking the papers around . . .”
“That’s what I told them,” Carol said. “One guy, no problem. Trouble is, everybody’s so short that it is a problem.”
LETTY HAD begged a ride to Channel Three from Weather, and Jennifer Carey was supposed to drive her home—but she had experience with local buses, and decided to head back to St. Paul. When she left, producers and cameramen were coming in, gearing up for convention coverage. Some kind of march was scheduled for St. Paul, and a couple of producers were talking about possible trouble in the streets.
She left a note for Carey and caught the 94 bus out of Minneapolis, transferred to the 84 at Midway Center, rode south down Snelling, then caught a 74, which took her to a couple blocks from the house. On the trip across the river, she mulled the problem. Randy Whitcomb had been feuding with Lucas for years, and now he was coming after her.
What did he want? Revenge, most likely. To hurt her, to get at Lucas.
She’d grown up out in the countryside, and had firsthand knowledge of the kind of focused dislike, hatred, disdain, that might lead to violence. Whitcomb blamed Lucas for a beating that put him in the hospital and in jail, and then for a shooting that crippled him.
So what kind of revenge would it be? Well, he’d cut up the face of one of his hookers with a beer-can opener; that seemed like a possibility. Maybe he’d torture and kill her—though how he’d go about that, she didn’t know. He was crippled, and during the encounter at the McDonald’s, he didn’t look especially strong in his upper body; nor did the woman with him look especially competent. Rape? Could a crippled person rape somebody? She didn’t know.
Probably planned to trick her somehow. Or maybe he’d have help. From what she’d read, he didn’t seem to be a likeable sort, a leader, the kind of person who’d inspire any particular loyalty, in something as desperate as the kidnapping and murder of a cop’s kid. Or almost kid, she thought. But, who knows? Maybe he’d met somebody in prison, somebody who also had a grudge against Lucas.
One thing, though, was clear in her mind—if Lucas heard about this, he’d kill Whitcomb. Not theoretically kill, but actually kill. He’d probably do it in a clever way that would be undetectable, unprovable. But there were always accidents. Lucas himself had told her that: that sometimes, the cleverest of crimes was foiled by an unforeseeable accident.
He would take the risk, she thought.
LETTY NEEDED A FATHER, and a mother, and when her mother was murdered, Davenport and Weather had been there.
If there was any way she could prevent Lucas from taking the risk by acting against Whitcomb, she’d do it. She had, in fact, in the ugly denouement of the case where she’d met Lucas, shot a cop—actually, she’d shot the same cop on two different occasions—and had never felt the slightest regret. She’d never had a problem being decisive.
She slipped the piece of paper out of her backpack, with Whitcomb’s address on it, contemplated it.
All right, she thought. Take a look.
ELLEN, THE HOUSEKEEPER, was changing sheets when Letty walked through the door; Letty said hello, got a Coke from the refrigerator, put it in her backpack, and went quietly through the house and down the basement stairs. Lucas had a workbench in the basement, and a gun safe. She found the hidden key for the gun safe, unlocked it, dragged out a nylon bag of miscellaneous cop stuff, and took out the switchblade sheath. Lucas never used the knife, as far as she knew, and would never miss it. The sheath was made of black nylon with a safety buckle. She took the knife out of the sheath, put the sheath back, and pressed the button on the knife and felt the satisfying shock of the blade slamming out.
Good. Five inches of sharp steel, with a good point, and, halfway down the razor-sharp blade, two inches of serrations that would cut through the toughest nylon or Kevlar rope. The knife was flat and fairly thin, the handle made of a high-tech black plastic with a metal belt clip. She clipped it inside the waistband of her pants, where it would be handy.
THE DAY was gorgeous, warm, delightful biking.
She got her helmet and bike out of the garage, and headed north to Summit Avenue, then east, planning to cross St. Paul’s downtown, only remembering about the convention detours when she got to St. Paul Cathedral and saw a band of protesters marching down the hill toward the downtown. They appeared to be towing a coffin. A veterans-for-peace march: she’d heard a couple of producers talking about it.
She sat at the top of the hill, in the shade of the cathedral, watching, drank a couple ounces of Coke, got out the map and figured out a detour down University Avenue behind the Capitol and Regions Hospital.
A little longer, but not much trouble, riding through an industrial area, across the railroad tracks, up behind Swede Hollow Park. From the map, it looked like Whitcomb’s house was right on the edge of the park, but the other side from where she was, so she pedaled down to East Seventh and looked up the hill toward Metro State University.
All right. Here she was. Now what?
She had her hair up under her helmet, and was wearing sunglasses; that was enough of a disguise. Pedaling up the hill, she decided that she’d cruise Whitcomb’s place on the downhill. If they spotted her, it’d be an easy run down to Seventh and into downtown, where there’d be lots of cops around as convention security.
She did that, climbing the hill, taking the left on Hope to Margaret, and paused there. She could see the trees from the park behind the houses on Greenbriar, but there must be, she thought, a huge hole behind the houses, because she was looking at treetops.
Needed more scouting; but the house was right there, or should be, about halfway down the street. She got up her guts, and pedaled on down. Before she could spot Whitcomb’s number, she saw the van, sitting by the side of the house.
The house was old and decrepit, with peeling paint, a crumbling front porch, a sagging roof, and a front sidewalk of poured concrete slabs that were tilted this way and that. The grass on the postage-stamp lawn had rarely been cut, she thought; it lay flat, like the fescue grass in a cow pasture.
She rolled on by, saw nobody, looked to her left and saw the break in the line of houses. From a block over, she could look between two houses and see the front of Whitcomb’s place. She’d heard Lucas and Del and Sloan and Virgil and all the others talk about the boredom of surveillance, and the sometimes spectacular payoffs.
She’d watch for a while, she decided. She could cruise the area around the park, and check the van every few minutes.
Get the lay of the land . . .
A BIKE PATH wound down through the park, as it turned out. The place was essentially a hole in the ground, but not just an ordinary hole: it was a huge, spectacular hole, almost like a quarry. She could see houses along the top rim, through breaks in the trees. As a park, there wasn’t much, and what
there was, was overgrown, weedy. A bum was wandering through, carrying a backpack, watching her curiously, as though she were a strange sight.
Maybe she was, she thought.
She pedaled out of the park, around the back, up the hill, and found a spot one block over from Whitcomb’s place.
Got lucky. She’d sat there, with her bike, for ten minutes, when Whitcomb’s door banged open, and Randy Whitcomb, followed by the woman, rolled down the wooden handicap ramp to the van. They were trailed by a third man, rail-thin, with a scruffy beard.
Whitcomb pointed a remote control at the van, and the side door rolled back, and a ramp unfolded onto the driveway. Whitcomb rolled himself up the ramp, and the woman strapped him in, the straps anchored to the floor. When she was done, the woman yanked on the straps, testing them, then walked around the van and got into the driver’s seat, and the second man got in the passenger side.
The van backed out of the driveway, into the street, and turned down the hill. Letty ran parallel, to Seventh Street, saw the van heading into town.
AS A YOUNG GIRL, she’d learned that if she decided to do something, it was best to do it immediately: otherwise, somebody would stop you from doing it, or you’d start thinking too much and chicken out. She’d taught herself to drive when she was eight, bumping around the field behind the house, and though the cops would get pissed when they caught her at it, she’d driven herself all over the county by the time she was eleven.
An old drunk would sometimes lend her his truck in return for a late-night pickup at the town bar; and when her mom got drunk, she’d provided the same service. In her driving years, she’d never had an accident.
Now, as the van dwindled in the distance, she looked back at the house. How quickly could they get back, anyway? With the snarl of traffic in town, with streets blocked by marches . . .
She turned around and pulled up the hill, pedaling hard, straight up the street to Whitcomb’s place, down the side, turned the bike so it was facing out the drive.
The handicapped ramp ended in a newer-looking door with six small panes arranged in a square looking into a mudroom off a kitchen, just like the country farmhouse where she’d grown up. She knocked, loudly, heard nothing. Looked around. She could be seen from the street, but jeez, she was a young girl on a back porch.
Letty knew about burglary from Lucas and Del and Shrake and Jenkins and all the other cops who hung around with Lucas; and from the reporters and producers at the station. She knew you were allowed one loud noise, or two quiet ones . . .
She took the switchblade out of her waistband, flicked the blade out, took another quick look around, and shoved the blade through the glass next to the door lock. The glass dropped inside the door and she had to punch it again to get the last of it out. Then she reached through and flicked the turn-lock.
The house was quiet inside, smelled of rotten vegetables and dirty diapers and smoke. In fact, it was only half a house—an apartment. The front door led to the porch, but there was no way to get into the other side of the house.
She went back to the kitchen after the first look, got a dish rag off the sink, wiped the lock where she’d touched it, then moved through the house, looking for targets of interest. She found that there was almost nothing to see—a ratty old couch, two scarred tables, a couple of chairs, a broken-down bed in a room that may once have been a dining room, a new TV set with a cable connection. She found stairs going up to what might have originally been a bedroom, but the bedroom was empty, nothing but a half-dozen Snickers candy bar wrappers on the floor, and three or four cigarette butts.
Whitcomb had a lot of clothes, and so did the woman, most of them hung in a doorless closet, the others in a plastic-laminate chest of drawers. The woman wore cheap fashion jeans and low-cut blouses and black brassieres and thong underwear. Tucked in the rickety chest of drawers was a box of Reality female condoms. The woman, Letty understood, was a hooker.
She stopped to listen, heard nothing. Saw a flash of amber on a windowsill, checked it, found five empty pill containers. The names of the drugs meant nothing to her.
In the whole house, the only new thing was the high-def Sony television with an Xbox 360 game machine and a couple of controllers.
Then she found Randy’s switch.
She knew what it was, because she’d known a man who’d beaten his children with a switch just like it, until one day, after whipping one of his daughters for some imagined moral infraction, his two older sons had taken him out into the side yard and had beaten him so badly that he hadn’t been able to walk for the best part of a year.
Anyway, she knew what it was, and she took it out from behind the couch, handling it with the dish rag from the kitchen, and she looked at the blood spots. He’s a pimp, she’s a hooker, and he beats her with it. Letty considered breaking it into pieces, then thought, Huh, and put it back.
Took a last look around, and backed out of the house.
Pulled the door shut, got on her bike, and rode away, down the hill, toward town.
Things to think about.
8
LUCAS TALKED TO EVERY MANAGER, assistant manager, and bellman he could find, in all of St. Paul’s hotels, got unanimous head-shakes, and was headed out the door of his last stop when he saw Mitford walking toward the bar with a couple of other guys.
“Neil!”
Mitford turned, spotted him, walked over: “How’s it going?”
“Slowly. I’m walking a picture around . . .” He showed Mitford the shot of Cohn, told him about the victim interviews, and about Jones’s impatience with the victims.
“You told him about the money?” Mitford asked.
“He knew about the money. He knew there was something going on.” Lucas shook his head. “There’re going to be rumors, and when it gets out to the blogs, you’ll have some damage control to do.”
“It’ll get swamped by all the other noise . . . Listen, come on over and meet these guys. They might have some ideas.”
The guys were out-of-towners, professional handlers, Democrats in town to watch the Republicans do their stuff. Ray Landy and Dick McCollum were talking about McCain and his vice-presidential pick, the unknown governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. They couldn’t stop talking about her, veering from amazement to ridicule, watching their BlackBerrys as commentary poured in from friends, reading the messages aloud. They got a table in the tiny bar, and Landy said to Lucas: “You’re an outside guy. What do you outside guys think about Palin?”
Lucas said, “I’m mostly a Democrat, so . . . maybe I’m not the best judge.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Landy said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know anything about her. What bothers me is that it was a quick decision, I guess—that’s what the papers all say,” Lucas said. “They say that McCain is rolling the bones. I don’t know about Palin, but I’m not sure I want to vote for a guy who’d roll the bones on a presidential election. Doesn’t make him seem like a calm, rational decision-maker.”
“Bless you,” Landy said. “I hope everybody’s thinking that way.”
THE THREE POLS ordered Bloody Marys and Lucas got a Diet Coke. Mitford said, “Guys, Lucas is a big shot in our Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He’s looking into the robberies . . .”
McCollum was a pale-eyed man who fiddled with an unlit cigarette, twiddling it like a pencil between his nicotine-stained fingers: “You a cop?”
Lucas nodded. “Yup.”
“He’s handled things for the governor for a while—I asked him to look into these things,” Mitford said.
The drinks came and they stopped talking until they’d all had a sip, and the waitress left, and McCollum said, “There are fifteen guys like them. Well, there were, anyway. Some of them might have taken off.”
“You ever heard of anything like this before?” Lucas asked.
Both men shook their heads, and Landy said, “You hear about it at a lot lower level—but not at this level. You know, when the money g
ets down to the street, you’ll have robberies, but they’re random, small-time stuff. A few hundred here or there. That’s what happens when you walk around in a bad area with your pockets full of twenty-dollar bills.” He said “bad air-ee-a” in a way that suggested it was a cliché wherever he came from.
“I never quite understood where the money was going,” Lucas said.
Landy looked at Mitford, who shrugged, and Landy said, “When you’re running a campaign, you’ve got all these people down at the bottom who need walking-around money. They want to get lunch, or buy lunch for somebody, or catch a cab, or get somebody a cab, or pay for gas, or even get some lawn signs together. These are people who turn out the vote. You can’t issue a check to all of them—and a lot of them don’t have money to do it on their own. I mean, any money.”
“Say you’re working an area with gangs,” McCollum said. “There might be somebody who is, like, an officer in a gang. He can turn out a certain vote—fifty people, seventy-five people, a hundred people, maybe even a few hundred people. He needs to get around for a few weeks. Somebody might toss him a few hundred dollars, depending on what he does . . .”
“A couple grand, maybe,” Landy said.
“And the candidate might not want his name on a check going to a gang leader,” McCollum said. “So, the cash is like oil. It greases the wheel.”
“Seems like a lot of money,” Lucas said. “A million bucks, more . . .”
“It is a lot, at this level, when it’s in a suitcase. Once you get down to the street, it’s pretty parceled out. You might put a couple of million in a big place like Philly, or Dade County, or Cleveland, but it’s mostly in handfuls. Mostly, less than a grand. You know, you get two or three thousand people working informally, they need lunch and cab fare and so on . . . you can go through a mil pretty damn fast.”