STADIC HEARD ABOUT the scramble out to Minnetonka, and called LaChaise, while LaChaise, Martin and Sandy were still driving back downtown.
“They’re out there now,” he said, with thin satisfaction. “They were about five minutes off your ass.”
“What happened to Winter?” LaChaise asked, prompted by Martin.
“They’re talking to him. The way I heard it, he’s cooperating.”
“Fucker must’ve called them the minute we were gone,” LaChaise said. “They got the car?”
“I don’t know,” Stadic said.
“We better get out of sight.”
“Yeah: and one more thing. Me and a half-dozen other guys are supposed to be on the way to Hennepin General. They think you might be on the way there.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, but we’re on the way over there. They talked to Winter, and he must’ve said something.”
“I gotta think,” LaChaise said. “Something’s screwy.”
STADIC SAT BEHIND a desk in the emergency room, a shotgun by his feet, while Lester and another cop named Davis talked about ways of blocking off the drive without being too conspicuous about it. Lucas and Del showed up, cold, damp, hurried.
“You get the new composites on the street?” Lucas asked Lester.
“Yeah, and we got the car out,” Lester said. As they talked, they drifted toward a group of chairs a few feet from Stadic. “Big brown car. What the fuck does that mean? What we got to do is break out where they’re hiding.”
“Until we do that . . .”
Davenport went on talking but Stadic blanked. All he could think of was, Big Brown Car. And he thought, Oh, shit, they’re at Harp’s.
At noon, he was relieved of duty. He stopped at the office just long enough to pick up a pair of 8 × 50 naval binoculars, then drove down toward Harp’s place. He stopped a block and a half away and put the glasses on the windows above the laundromat. He hadn’t been watching for more than five minutes when he saw the blinds move—somebody looking out at the street.
All right, he had them again. Same deal? He could wait in the street until they came out—they’d be in the car, that’d be a problem. He could maybe park across the street, and wait: and when he saw the garage door going up, he could run over to the driver’s side, blow it up from one foot away—press the muzzle of the shotgun against the glass and pull the trigger. That would take out the driver, then the other guy . . . He’d need his vest.
He chewed his thumbnail nervously. A lot could go wrong. There’d be questions, later, too. But he could talk those away. He kept thinking about the death of Sell-More, he’d say, and how Harp seemed to tie into it. He ran Harp’s name on the computer and came up with a Lincoln . . . but why wouldn’t he tell everybody at that point? Why would he go in by himself?
He tried to work it through, but his mind wasn’t right: too tired. He drove past the apartment to a liquor store with a pay phone, and dialed LaChaise again.
“We’re looking for a big brown car, a Lincoln or a Buick.”
“That’s it? No tags?”
“No tags. But they’ve got a new composite out on you—it won’t be on TV until the late news, they want to see if you hit the hospital. But they say you’ve got gray hair, and gray beards, and you look like old men.”
“That fuckin’ Winter,” LaChaise said. Then, “What’s it like at the hospital. Security?”
“Tighter than a drum.”
“Goddamnit . . .”
“If I was you, I’d think about packing up and getting out,” Stadic said. “Your time’s running out.”
After a moment, LaChaise said, “Maybe.”
Stadic could hear him breathing; five seconds, ten. Then Stadic said, “Really?”
“We’re talking about it,” LaChaise said. “Mexico.”
21
THE WHOLE DAY dragged, the hours squeezing by: every cop in the department was on the street: there were rumors that the local gangs were filling up the Chicago-bound buses, just to get out of the pressure.
Lucas had run out of ideas, and spent half the day at the hospital, with dwindling expectations.
Night came, but no LaChaise ...
THE HOSPITAL WAS quiet, dark. Nurses padded around in running shoes, answering calls from individual rooms, pushing pills. Lucas, Del and a narcotics cop named McKinney hung out in an office just off the main lobby. There was no telling where LaChaise and Martin would try to crack the place—if they tried at all—but from the lobby, they could move quickly to either end of the building.
“Unless they come in by parachute,” McKinney said.
“That’d be good,” Del said. “You see that movie?”
“Yeah . . . actually, there’ve been a couple of them. There was that one where the guy jumps out of the plane without a ’chute, you see that one? Grabs the guy in midair?”
“What’s-his-name was in it, the kid, you know, the Excellent Adventure guy,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, I saw that,” said McKinney. “That’s what got me jumpin’.”
“Hey, you jump? Far out . . .”
They talked about skydiving until they wore it out, then Lucas went back down the hall and crawled into an empty bed. Del sat up with McKinney; when first light came, he put his gun away and went to sit with Cheryl until she woke.
“YOU WANT ME to drive?” Martin asked Sandy.
“No, I’m okay,” she said.
“Watch your speed. We don’t want to attract no cops,” Martin said.
“Maybe we should of stopped in Des Moines,” LaChaise said. “This is a long fuckin’ way.”
LaChaise had spent the trip in the backseat. Whenever they passed a highway patrolman—they’d seen three—he sprawled out of sight.
“Yeah, well, we’re almost there,” Martin said. “See that glow out there? Way off, straight ahead? That’s Kansas City.”
They’d made the decision late in the afternoon, LaChaise and Martin, and just after dark, LaChaise had walked back to the bedroom and said, “Get your stuff ready.”
Sandy sat up. “Where’re we going?”
“Mexico.”
“Mexico? Dick, are you serious?” She felt a quick beat of hope. If they made it out of town, they’d have some room. And someplace along the road, they’d forget about her for a while, and she’d walk away. A dusty little restaurant someplace, a small town out on the desert . . . she’d wait until they started eating, then she’d tell them she had to go to the ladies’ room and then she’d walk out, leave a note on the car seat, hide until they were gone.
It was all there, in her mind’s eye: and when they were gone—long gone—she’d turn herself in. Work it out.
A possibility.
But now Dick was complaining that they’d come too far? What was all that about?
She thought about it, a sinking feeling, and finally asked, “Why is Kansas City too far, Dick?” He didn’t answer immediately. “Dick?”
“Because we don’t want to drive in the daytime,” Martin said. He looked at his watch. “It’ll be light in another hour. We’ve got to find a motel.”
Martin spotted an all-night supermarket on the outskirts of the city, and told Sandy to take the off ramp. LaChaise waited in the car with Sandy until Martin returned: he’d bought two loaves of bread, a couple of pounds of sandwich meat, and two big bars of dark green auto mechanic’s soap.
“What’s the soap for?” Sandy asked, peering into the bag.
“Whittlin’,” Martin said, grinning at her.
LaChaise rented a room in a chain motel called the Red Roof Inn. LaChaise went in because he’d shaved just before they left the Cities, and Sandy had given him a neat trim. Wearing one of Harp’s suits with a silk tie, he looked like a Republican. He paid cash for the room, two days, said he was alone, and asked that the maid be told not to wake him up.
“Been traveling all night,” he said.
“No problem,” said the woman behind the desk.
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The room was on the back side of the motel, with two double beds and a TV. They slept, restlessly, until two o’clock, when Martin got up and ordered a pizza, Coke and coffee from a local pizza place. The stuff was delivered, no questions, and they ate silently. At four, with the sun slipping down in the west, they went back out to the car.
Martin said, “I’ll drive.”
“That’s all right, I . . .”
“Get in the back and shut up,” LaChaise said.
“What’s going on?” Sandy asked. LaChaise grabbed her by the jacket and jerked her forward, until his face was only an inch from hers: she could smell the cheese and onions from the pizza.
“Change of plans. Now get in the fuckin’ car.”
She got in the car. “Dick, what’re you going to do? Dick . . . ?”
“We’re gonna rob another goddamned credit union, is what we’re gonna do,” LaChaise said.
LUCAS WAS AT the hospital because he couldn’t think of any better place to be: they now hadn’t heard from LaChaise for thirty-six hours. Del, Sloan, Sherrill came and went and returned. They were running out of conversational gambits, sitting in dark rooms, out of sight, waiting . . .
Lester called. “Lucas: LaChaise, Martin and Darling just hit a credit union in Kansas City. Not more than an hour ago—four twenty-five.”
“Kansas City?” The news came like a punch, left him unsteady. “Are they sure?”
“Yeah, they say there’s no doubt. We’re getting a videotape relayed through TV3. The Kansas City cops gave it to everybody in sight.”
“How soon will you have the tape?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes, I guess. TV3’s putting it on the air soon as they get it. We’re gonna tape it off them.”
Lucas hung up and looked at Sherrill and Sloan: “You ain’t gonna believe it,” he said.
THE ROBBERY WAS smooth, professional. Martin was in first with an AR-15. He was shouting the moment he came through the door, leveling the rifle, pointing at people.
LaChaise pushed Sandy Darling through the door behind Martin, then vaulted up on the counter. There were only two customers in the place, and three people behind the counter. LaChaise looted the cash drawers, said something to one of the younger women, smacked her on the ass with the palm of his hand and crossed through the counter gate. The camera, taking in the whole office, showed Sandy Darling pressed against the wall, her hands over her ears.
“They ain’t no cherries,” Del said. They were in homicide, fifteen guys and four women standing around a small TV.
“You’ve seen it before,” Lucas said. “It’s the same goddamn robbery that we broke up, all over again.”
“Except for the grenade,” Sherrill said.
As they were backing out the door, Martin gave a little speech. “We want everybody into the manager’s office, on the floor, behind the desk. We’re gonna roll a hand grenade in here . . . now I don’t want to scare anyone, ’cause they’re nothing like you see in movies. There’ll just be a little pop. You’ll be fine if you’re behind the desk . . .”
Martin held up what looked like a grenade, and the office staff and customers jammed into the manager’s office, out of sight. Martin called, “Here we go,” and rolled the grenade into the room, and disappeared. The grenade turned out to be a hand-carved lump of green soap that didn’t look too much like a grenade, when you looked at it close.
“No plates,” Lucas grunted, watching. “They didn’t want anybody to run out and see the car and get the plates.”
“Darling didn’t look too happy to be there. No gun, she looked scared, they had to push her in and out,” Sloan said.
“They got eight grand,” said somebody else.
“So he says to this chick,” Lester began, and then corrected himself, “. . . this woman, the teller, he says, ‘You oughta make it to Acapulco sometime, honey.’ ”
“Sounds like bullshit,” said Del.
“I don’t know,” Lester said. “He’s the kind of guy who’d say something like that.” He looked around the room: “I wish we’d taken him here, goddamnit.”
LATE THAT NIGHT, Sandy sat in the backseat. Unmoving, wide awake, not quite believing it. The lights of Des Moines were fading in the rear window. They were headed back to Minneapolis, ahead of what the all-night stations were saying was a major storm coming up from the Southwest. Already blizzard conditions in Nebraska.
They’d be in the Cities by dawn, back in the apartment. The whole thing had been a game, to loosen up the targets.
“A stroke of fuckin’ genius,” LaChaise said, pounding Martin on the back. “I just wish we had someplace to spend the cash.”
22
LUCAS SAT AWAKE, trying to make sense of it. If LaChaise and Martin were on a suicide run—and it had appeared that way from the beginning—what had changed their minds? They couldn’t believe that escape was as simple as running to Mexico. The Mexicans would ship them back to the States as quickly as they were found; or kill them.
Maybe it was simpler than he was making it: maybe their nerve failed.
He got up, hands in his pockets, and stared out the window across his snow-covered lawn. In the distance, on the other side of the Mississippi, he could see Christmas lights red, green and white along somebody’s roofline. A silent night.
And he was restless. He hadn’t wanted Weather to come back to the house—one more night in the hotel, he’d said, just until we find their trail again—but she’d insisted. She wanted to sleep in her own bed. She was in it now, and sleeping soundly.
Lucas was sitting up with a pistol and a twelve-gauge Wingmaster pump. He looked at a clock: four in the morning.
He picked up a TV remote, pointed at a small TV in the corner of the room, and called up the aviation weather service. All day, the weather forecasters had been talking about a huge low-pressure system that was pin-wheeling up from the southern Rockies. Snow had overrun all of the southwestern and south-central parts of the state, and now the weather radar showed it edging into the metro area.
If they were coming back, he thought—if this thing was no more than a shuck—and if they’d fallen behind the snow line, they might be stalled for a day. If they’d stayed ahead of it, they’d be coming into town about now.
Nobody thought they’d be coming back. The network TV people were getting out of town as fast as they could pack up and find space on an outgoing plane. Nobody wanted to be stuck out in flyover country the week before Christmas, not with a big storm coming.
The cops were the same way: going home, filing for overtime. Lucas called Kansas City cops, and the Missouri and Kansas highway patrols every hour, looking for even the faintest sniff of LaChaise. Nobody had gotten one: they’d vanished.
Just as if they’d taken country roads east and north, instead of west and south, where the search was focused, Lucas thought. He looked out the window again, then self-consciously went and closed the wooden blinds.
After killing the TV, he wandered through the dark house, moving by touch, listening, trailing the shotgun. He checked the security system, got a drink of water and went back to the living room where he dropped on a couch. In a few minutes, he eased into a fitful sleep, the .45 in a belly holster, the shotgun on the coffee table.
THEY STAYED AHEAD of the snow.
They drove through southern Iowa in the crackling cold, millions of stars but no moon, following the red and yellow lights of the freighter trucks heading into Des Moines, and after Des Moines, up toward Minneapolis-St. Paul. They stopped once at a gas station, the bare-faced LaChaise pumping the gas and paying a sleepy attendant, the hood of his parka covering his head, a scarf shrouding his neck.
“Colder’n a witch’s left tit,” the attendant said. He looked at a thermometer in the window. “Six below. You want some Heat to put in the gas?”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” LaChaise said. A compact television sat in a corner, turned to CNN. As the attendant was ringing up the sale, a security-camera videotape
came up, replaying the Kansas City robbery.
“What’s that shit?” LaChaise asked.
The attendant glanced at the TV. “Ah, it’s them assholes that were up in the Cities. They’re making a run for Mexico.”
“Good,” LaChaise said.
“Wisht I was going with them,” the attendant said, and he counted out the change.
As they continued up I-35, the nighttime radio stations came and went, playing Christmas music. Clouds began to move in, like dark arrows overhead; the stars winked out.
“Christmas, four days,” Sandy said, sadness in her voice.
“Don’t mean a fuckin’ thing to me,” LaChaise said. “My old man drank up our Christmases.”
“You must of had a few,” Sandy said.
LaChaise sat silent for a moment, then said, “Maybe a couple.” He thought about his sister and her feetsie pajamas.
Martin said, “We had a couple of good ones, when my old man was alive. He got me a fire engine, once.”
“What happened to him?” Sandy asked.
“He died,” Martin said. “Throat cancer.”
“Jeez, that’s awful,” Sandy said. “I’m sorry.”
“Hard way to go,” Martin said. “Then it was me and my ma, and we didn’t have no Christmases after that.”
LaChaise didn’t like the subject matter and fiddled with the radio: the scanner locked on “O Holy Night.”
“I know this song; my old man used to sing it,” Martin said.
And he sang along in a creditable baritone,
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining, this is the night of the birth of Our Lord.
Sandy and LaChaise, astonished, glanced at each other: then Sandy looked out the windows, at the thin snowflakes now streaking past, and felt like she was a long way from anywhere.