Sloan was standing at the edge of the hill, his hands in his coat pockets. A half-block away, three television trucks sat at the side of the street, their engines running, their microwave dishes pointed at the sky. A reporter and photographer from the Star Tribune were sitting on the hood of their car, talking to a TV cameraman.
“Ain’t this the shits?” Sloan asked when Lucas and Lily came up.
“Yeah.” Lucas nodded at the reporters. “Have we put anything out yet? To the newsies?”
“Nothing, yet,” Sloan said. “Daniel’s calling a press conference. He’s decided to release the names, by the way—the Crows and Shadow Love. He’s going to ask for help and come down hard on the idea that the Crows are killing other Indians.”
“People liked Hart,” Lucas said.
“That’s what they say,” Sloan agreed.
Down the hill, under portable lights, the assistant medical examiners were lifting Hart’s body onto a stretcher. “Did anybody see anything at all?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah. A woman back up the hill,” Sloan said. “She’s on her way downtown now, to look at Shadow Love’s pictures. She saw a couple of guys walk over the hill, and then later she saw one of them getting in a car. Younger guy, skinny, wearing a fatigue jacket.”
“Shadow Love,” said Lucas.
“Could be. A woman was driving the car. She was real short. She could barely see over the steering wheel. She had dark hair pulled back in a bun.”
“What about the car?”
“Older. No make or model. The witness never looked at the license number. She said one of the back corner windows—you know, one of those little triangle things?—had been knocked out and there was a piece of box cardboard in it. That’s about it. It was green. Pale green.”
“You saw Larry earlier, right?”
“Yeah. Just before noon. He said he was heading back down Lake. He was planning to hit the bars up at the top of the street. I backtracked him as far as the Nub Inn. The bartender who was on duty earlier in the day had already gone home, but I talked to him on the phone and he said Hart got a call there. He said he seemed surprised, like he couldn’t figure out how anybody would know he was there. Anyway, he took the call and a couple of minutes later went running out of the place.”
“Setup,” said Lily.
“That’s what I figure,” Sloan said. “We’ve got a guy over, talking to the bartender, but I don’t think he’ll have much more to say.”
“Christ, what a mess,” Lucas said, running his fingers through his hair.
“My wife is going to be excreting bricks when she finds out one of our people got hit,” Sloan said.
“I never heard of it before, not around here,” Lucas said, shaking his head. He glanced at Lily. “You get this kind of stuff?”
“Every once in a while. Some dealers hit a cop a couple years ago, just to show they could do it.”
“What happened?”
“The guys that did it . . . they’re not with us anymore.”
“Ah.” Lucas nodded.
The bespectacled Homicide cop made his way up the hill, pushing his knees down with his hands as he climbed the last few feet. He was breathing heavily when he got to the top.
“How’s it going, Jim?” Lucas asked.
“Not so good. Not a goddamned thing down there.”
“No shell?”
“Nope. Not so far. We’ve worked it over pretty good. I think it was all the knife. Hell of a way to go.”
“Tracks?”
“Can’t find any,” the Homicide cop said. “Too grassy. That long stuff is like walking on sponges. They must have come off the street, right onto it . . . . You know, Hart had his back to the guy, the cutter. No struggle. Nothing. I wonder if it was somebody he trusted?”
“Probably held him at gunpoint, like Hood did with Andretti,” Lily said.
“Yeah, there’s that,” the cop said. He looked down the steep embankment. “But you’d think that he’d have tried to run or jump. One big jump down that hill, he’d be ten or fifteen feet from the shooter . . . but there was no sign of a jump. No place where his feet dug in. No grass stains on his pants. Nothing.”
“He gave up,” Lily said, looking at Lucas.
A crowd had gathered behind the reporters. Several of the onlookers were Indian, and Lily decided to mingle, hoping that someone else had seen something. While she worked the crowd, Lucas went down the block to a pay phone and called TV3. A receptionist hunted down Jennifer. “A tip,” Lucas said when she came on the line.
“Is there a price?”
“Yeah. We’ll get to that later.”
“So what’s the tip?”
“You’ve got some guys out by the river, working a homicide?”
“Yes. Jensen and . . .”
“It’s Larry Hart. The Indian expert from Welfare that we brought in to help track these assassins.”
“Holy shit,” she said. Her voice was hushed. “Who else knows?”
“Nobody, at the moment. Daniel’s calling a press conference, probably in a half-hour or so . . . .”
“He already did, we’ve got people on the way.”
“If you go on the air ahead of time, you’ve got to cover me. Don’t give it to that fuckin’ Kennedy, because everybody knows you guys lay off stories on each other.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, a touch of intensity in her voice. “What else? Cut?”
“Yeah. Just like the others. Throat cut, bled to death.”
“When?”
“We don’t know. This afternoon. Early afternoon, probably. He was found by a couple of kids who were playing along the hill.”
“Okay. What else? Was he breaking the case? Was he close?”
“He wasn’t this morning, but maybe he ran into something. We don’t know. Now: Here’s the price.”
“Yeah?”
“We think the guy who did it is named Shadow Love. Thirties, Sioux, skinny, tattoos on his arms. Daniel’s going to release the name. Don’t use it until he does, but when he does, pound it. I want Shadow Love’s name on the air every ten seconds. I want you to pound on the idea that he’s killing other Indians. Push Daniel for some photos—they’ve got good photos of him from California, and don’t let them bullshit you on that. Demand the fuckin’ photos. Give them as much airtime as you can. Tell the boss that if you cooperate, I feed you more exclusive stuff.”
“Hammer Shadow Love,” she said.
“Hard as you can,” Lucas said.
Lily got nothing from the crowd. When she was done, she asked Lucas to drop her at her room: “I need some sleep, and I need to think. Alone.”
Lucas nodded. “I could use some time myself.”
At her door, Lily turned to him. “What the fuck are we going to do, Davenport?” she blurted, her voice low and gravelly.
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. He reached out and brushed a lock of dark hair away from her cheek, back over her ear. “I just can’t stop with you.”
“I’m having a little trouble myself,” Lily said. “But I’ve got too much with David to make a break. I don’t think I’d want to break . . .”
“And I don’t want to lose Jen,” Lucas said. “But I just can’t stop with you. I’d like to take you right now . . . .” He pushed her back into the room, and she had her arms around his neck, and they rocked together for a minute, the heat growing until she pushed him back.
“Get out of here, God damn it,” she said. “I need some rest.”
“All right. See you tomorrow?”
“Mmm. Not too early.”
After dropping Lily off, Lucas drove back through town. Four trucks equipped with microwave dishes were clustered around the door to City Hall, black electronics cables snaking across the sidewalk into the building. On impulse, he pulled into a vacant cops-only parking spot and went inside.
The press conference was almost over. Lucas watched from the back as Daniel went through his routine. The television reporters were look
ing at their watches, ready to break away, while they listened to the the newspaper people ask a few final questions.
As he turned to leave, Jennifer stepped into the room and bumped him with an elbow.
“Thanks again. We were on the air an hour ago,” she said quietly. “Look at Shelly . . . .”
Shelly Breedlove, a reporter for Channel 8, was staring spitefully at them from across the room. She’d made the connection on TV3’s exclusive break on Larry Hart’s murder.
Jennifer smiled pleasantly back and said, “Fuck you, bitch,” under her breath. To Lucas she said, “Are you on your way home?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a baby-sitter . . . .”
Lucas slept poorly, his legs twitching, curling, uncurling. Jennifer curled against his bare back, her forehead against the nape of his neck, tears trickling down her cheeks. She could smell the perfume on him. It wasn’t hers and it wasn’t something he’d picked up sitting next to another woman. There’d been contact. A lot of contact. She lay awake, with the tears, and Lucas dreamed of a cold round circle of a shotgun pressed against his head, and of Larry Hart tumbling down the hillside above the Mississippi, the barges curling away, rolling down the river, their pilots unaware of the light going out on the hill above them . . . .
CHAPTER
22
Sam Crow raged through the house while Aaron sat silently in the La-Z-Boy, bathed in flickering light from the television set. Shadow Love’s picture was everywhere, views from the front and both sides, close-ups of his tattooed arms.
“That fuckin’ kid is ruinin’ us,” Sam shouted. He crowded against Barbara, who, frightened by his anger, wrapped and rewrapped her hands with a damp dish towel and pretended to do dishes between bouts of weeping. “How could you fuckin’ go along?”
“I didn’t want to,” she cried, “I didn’t know . . .”
“You knew.” Sam spat. “For Christ’s sakes, did you think he was delivering a fuckin’ Christmas card?”
“I didn’t know . . .”
“Where’d you leave him?”
“He got out by Loring Park . . . .”
“Where was he going?”
“I don’t know . . . . He said you wouldn’t want him here. He said he had to work alone . . . .”
“Fuck meee,” Sam called out. “Fuck meee . . . .”
Aaron appeared in the doorway. “C’mere, look at this.”
Sam followed him back to the living room. For the past half-hour, they’d seen report after report from Minneapolis: from the hillside where Hart’s body had been found, from the chief’s office, from Indian Country. Man-in-the-street interviews. Lily, working the crowd, an NYPD badge pinned to her coat. People talking to her, thrusting their faces in front of the camera.
Now that had changed. A room with light blue walls. An American flag. A podium with a circular American-eagle seal under a battery of microphones, and a man in a gray double-breasted suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket.
“It’s Clay,” Aaron said.
“ . . . terrorist group has now begun striking at its own people. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous but will, I hope, make it obvious to the Indian people that these killers don’t care any more about Indians than they do about whites . . . .”
And later:
“ . . . worked with Indian people during my entire career, and I’m asking my old friends of all Indian nations to call us at the FBI with any information about this group . . .”
And more:
“ . . . I will be accompanied by a task force of forty specialists, men and women from around the nation who will be brought in to break this ring. We are prepared to stay in Minnesota until we are successful in this endeavor. We will remain in full and immediate contact with the Washington center . . . .”
“Lawrence Duberville Clay,” Sam said, almost reverently, as he stared at the man on the TV screen. “Hurry up, motherfucker . . . .”
“There’s somebody here,” Barbara called from the kitchen, fear thick in her voice. “Somebody on the porch.”
The doorbell rang as Aaron hurried into the back bedroom, where he had been sleeping, and returned with an old blue .45. The bell rang again and then the front door pushed open. A dark figure, short hair, black eyes; Aaron, flattened against the hallway wall, at first thought it might be Shadow Love, but the man was too big . . . .
“Leo,” Aaron called in delight. A smile lit the old man’s face and he dropped the pistol to his side. “Sam, it’s Leo. Leo’s home.”
CHAPTER
23
“You’re sleeping with that New York cop. Lily.” Jennifer looked at him over the breakfast bar. Lucas was holding a glass of orange juice and looked down at it, as if hoping it held an answer. The newspaper sat next to his hand. The headline read: CROWS KILL COP.
He wasn’t a cop, Lucas thought. After a moment he glanced away from the table and then back at the newspaper and nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“Are you going to again?” Her face was pale, tired, her voice low and whispery.
“I can’t help it,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her. He turned the glass in his hand, swirling the juice.
“Is this . . . a long-term thing?” Jennifer asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Look at me,” she said.
“No.” He kept his eyes down.
“You can come back and see the baby, but call first. Once a week for now. I won’t continue our sexual relationship and I don’t want to see you. You can see the baby on Saturday nights, when I have a sitter. After Lily goes back to New York, we’ll talk. We’ll make some kind of arrangement so you can visit the baby on a regular basis.”
Now he looked up. “I love you,” he said.
Tears started in her eyes. “We’ve been through this before. You know what I feel like? I feel pathetic. I don’t like feeling pathetic. I won’t put up with it.”
“You’re not pathetic. When I look at you . . .”
“I don’t care what you see. Or anybody else. I’m pathetic in my own mind. So fuck you, Davenport.”
When Jennifer left, Lucas wandered around the house for a few moments, then drifted into the bedroom, undressed, and stood under a scalding shower. Daniel wanted every man on the street, but after Lucas had toweled off, he stood in front of an open closet, looking at the array of slacks and shirts, and then crawled back into bed and lapsed into unconsciousness. The Crows, Lily, Jennifer, the baby and game monsters from Drorg all crawled through his head. Every once in a while he felt the pull of the street scene outside Hood’s apartment: he’d see the bricks, the negotiating cop, a slice of Lily’s face, her .45 coming up. Each time he fought it down and stepped into a new dream fragment.
At one o’clock, Lily called. He didn’t answer the phone, but listened as her voice came in through his answering machine.
“This is Lily,” she said. “I was hoping we could get some lunch, but you haven’t called and I don’t know where you are and I’m starving so I’m going out now. If you get in, give me a call and we can go out to dinner. See you.”
He thought about picking up the phone, but didn’t, and went back to the bed. The phone rang again a half-hour later. This time it was Elle: “This is Elle, just calling to see how you are. You can call me at the residence.”
Lucas picked up the receiver. “Elle, I’m here,” he croaked.
“Hello. How are you?”
“A down day,” he said.
“Still the shotgun dream?”
“It’s still there. And sometimes during the day. The sensation of the steel.”
“It’s a classic flashback. We see it all the time with burn victims and shooting victims and people who’ve gone through other trauma. It’ll go away, believe me. Hold on.”
“I’m holding on, but it’s scary. Nothing’s ever gotten to me like this.”
“Are you going to play Thursday night?” Elle asked.
“I don’t know.”
>
“Why don’t you come a half-hour early? We can talk.”
“I’ll try to make it.”
The bed was like a drug. He didn’t want it, but he fell back on the sheets and in a minute was gone again. At two o’clock, suddenly touched with fear, he sat up, sweating, staring at the clock.
What? Nothing. Then the cold ring of the shotgun muzzle rapped him behind the ear. Lucas clapped a hand over the spot and let his head fall forward on his chest.
“Stop,” he said to himself. He could feel the sweat literally pop out on his forehead. “Stop this shit.”
Lily called again at five o’clock and he let it go. At seven, the phone rang a fourth time. “This is Anderson,” a voice said to the answering machine. “I’ve got something . . . .”
Lucas picked up the phone. “I’m here,” he said. “What is it?”
“Okay. Lucas. God damn.” There was the sound of computer printouts rustling. Anderson was excited; Lucas could picture him going through his notes. Anderson looked, talked and sometimes acted like an aging hillbilly. A few months earlier he had incorporated his private computer business and was, Lucas suspected, on his way to becoming rich with customized police software. “I went into Larry’s genealogical files for the Minnesota Sioux—you know how he had them stored in the city database?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I looked up all the Crows. They were all too old—not many Crows in Minnesota. So I got a typist and had her put all the names from Larry’s file into my machine in a sort routine . . . .”
“What?”
“Never mind. She put them in my machine in a list. Then I went over to State Vital Records and found all the women named Love who had babies between 1945 and 1965. You said this Shadow Love dude looked like he was in his thirties . . . .”
“Yeah.”
“So I pulled all of those. There were a hell of a lot of them, more than four hundred. But I could eliminate all the girl babies. That got rid of all but a hundred and ninety-seven. Then I put the names of the fathers into my machine—”