Easy Prey (27 page)

They parked their cars down the street, hooked up, and walked toward the drive. “No light in the garage,” Lucas said.

“Made that way,” Loring said. “No windows. You drive by, it looks like anything but a casino.”

“Looks like a rich dude's house,” Del said.

They turned up the drive, shoulder to shoulder, and unconsciously began spreading out, and each of them touched his own hip as they walked, feeling for the tender comfort of a gun. They were passing the house when a voice in the dark called, “Can we help you gentlemen?”

“Police officers,” Lucas said toward the voice. How many was “we”? No way to tell. “We're looking for a particular player.”

“Do you have some ID?”

Lucas still couldn't spot the voice. He could feel Del edging farther away from him on one side, Loring idling away on the other, an inch at a time, so they wouldn't all get taken down with a single burst. A little stress. He grinned and held up his card case. “Lucas Davenport,” he said. “And friends.”

The voice spoke softly—into a cell phone, Lucas thought—and two minutes later, a side door opened on the garage. Pat Kelly stepped out, a thin, white-haired man wearing a white dress shirt open at the throat. He looked tentatively down the driveway and said, “Davenport?”

“Yeah. Me and Loring and Del.”

“Jesus, like old home week. What's going on?”

“You got Trick Bentoin up there?”

“What's he done?”

“You got him?” Lucas asked.

“Well . . .”

“So we'll just run up and get him,” Lucas said.

“You're gonna scare the shit out of my guests,” Kelly said. “We're just a bunch of friends.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lucas said impatiently. “Look, you heard this lady cop got shot this afternoon?”

“Yeah? What's that got to do with Trick?”

“Something,” Lucas said. “So we're gonna go up.”

“Why don't I just ask him to step down?”

“Nah. If people knew exactly what was going on, they might start running. We're gonna have to go up, Pat. I guess it's up to you how we do it.”

Kelly shook his head. “Hey, if you wanna go up, you're the cops.”

 
 
THEY FOUND SEVEN guys sitting around an empty green-baize table on a beige carpet. There was no money in sight, no chips, no cards—an air of innocence smudged with cigar smoke. A television in the corner was tuned to ESPN; Trick Bentoin's chair was turned toward the TV. With the exception of Trick, the guys were all beefy, and every one of them wore a dress shirt. Suit jackets and sport coats hung off the back of plain wooden chairs. Trick was thin, and looked a little like a cowboy in a cigarette ad.

“Trick,” Lucas said. “You gotta cash out. We need you downtown.”

“Me?” He was surprised. The other six players looked at him.

“Yeah, it's that Rashid Al-Balah thing,” Lucas said.

“Man, we're right in the middle of
Sports
. . .”

“
Sports
what?” Del asked.

“
Sports Talk
?”

“Sorry, that's the radio,” Del said. “And the only goddamn place you ever watched sports was a book in Las Vegas. Come on along.”

“What if I told you I was on a roll?” Trick asked.

“You could just ask the guys to wait until you get back,” Loring said.

One of the guys grunted, “Huh,” and a couple of them grinned.

“Sorry. We need you,” Lucas said. He looked at the other men—other than the single grunt, none of them had said a single word, or had met his eyes—and said, “We'll wait at the bottom of the stairs.”

Pat Kelly followed them down. “That was relatively civilized,” he said.

“This is a nice place,” Lucas said. “But . . . don't push it.”

“I never push,” Kelly said genially. “Never, ever.”

 
 
TRICK BENTOIN APPEARED a minute later, pulling on a rumpled jacket, shook his head, and said, “Down four.”

“I thought you were on a roll,” Lucas said.

“I was. I'd been down nine. Another two hours, I'd of owned their asses, each and every one.” He looked at the three cops and said, “Well, I'm not gonna run. What're we doing?”

“We need to haul your ass out to Stillwater tomorrow, for a little discussion with Rashid Al-Balah.”

“You could've called,” Trick said. “I would've come in.”

“Couldn't find you. Didn't even know you were at the game for sure. And if we'd called, and you'd found it inconvenient . . .” Lucas let his voice trail away.

“So you're gonna put me in the fuckin' jail?” Trick asked.

“Well,” Lucas said, “we don't want to take a chance.”

“That's such a pain in the ass. I'll get some psycho up all night screaming. I need some sleep.”

“I got a spare bedroom,” Loring said. “If you really won't run.”

“I won't run,” Trick said. “You guys know me better than that.”

Lucas thought about it for a minute, then said, “All right. Let's do that. Then we won't have any bullshit, either, checking him in.”

“You want me to bring him over to your place?” Loring asked. “I'm up early tomorrow.”

“I'll be down at the office about eight. Let's meet there,” Lucas said. “I'll make some calls tonight and get the interview set up.”

Del said, “I'll be there, too. I'll come out to Stillwater with you.”

“Marcy's gonna be okay,” Loring said.

“Yeah. I just don't want any early calls tomorrow,” Lucas said. “No goddamn early calls.”

18

TUESDAY. FOURTH DAY of the case.

As beaten up as he was, he hadn't been able to sleep. Hadn't been able to drive Marcy out of his head, or Weather. Or Catrin. And Jael Corbeau was there in a corner, watching. He even thought about standing in the barnyard with Mrs. Clay, the night he delivered the fishing boat, and what might've happened with their lives in other circumstances.

And he thought about the Olsons, dead together in the hotel, and their son, running toward the highway, pulling his hair out to the sides of his head, as though trying to pull a devil out of his skull.

He hadn't been able to sleep, but somehow must have, for a while. He might have been asleep, he thought, when the alarm went off, and shook him out of bed—it was one of those nights when he couldn't tell whether he was awake or only dreaming that he was awake, the dreams punctuated by the liquid green light from the clock as he touched it at two, three, four, and five o'clock. He didn't remember touching it at six, and now at seven the alarm went. . . .

Marcy. He called the hospital and identified himself. She was still listed as critical, in intensive care. Still alive, still asleep. He stood in the shower for ten minutes, slowly waking up. Drove out to a SuperAmerica store for a shot of coffee. Rolled into the parking ramp a few minutes after eight.

Loring was waiting in Homicide with Trick Bentoin. “Del called. He's on the way,” Loring said. “He says to turn on your cell phone.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Del looked as beat up as Lucas felt, grinned when he arrived, said, “Well, you look like shit,” and Lucas said, “So that's two of us.” Del asked, “Have you been to the hospital?”

“No. I called. She's still asleep.”

“Let's go over for a minute,” Del said. “You can get more face-to-face.”

They walked over in the cold morning, breathing steam into the air. The streets were crowded with cheerful going-to-work people. Not long, Lucas thought, before Thanksgiving and then Christmas.

“Christmas coming,” Del said, picking up the thought.

At the hospital, they got almost nothing from the nurses, because the nurses knew almost nothing.

“Let's go see if Weather's in,” Lucas suggested.

“Yeah?” Del looked at him curiously. Weather couldn't look at Lucas; not last year, anyway. Had something changed?

“Yeah. Come on.”

Weather was in the women's locker room. A nurse went in and got her, and she came out in her scrubs and booties. She said,“'Lo, Del. You're looking like . . . you look a little tired.”

“Thanks,” Del said dryly.

Lucas asked, “You talk to any of your pals about Marcy? We can't get anything downstairs.”

“Her blood pressure's a little funky,” Weather said. “It could be shock, but Hirschfeld's afraid she might've sprung a leak. They're watching her.”

Lucas panicked. “Sprung a leak? What does that mean? Sprung a leak?”

Weather touched his hand. “Lucas, it can happen. As messed up as she was, it'd be a miracle if they did everything perfectly. If it's a leak, it's not huge. She's just a little funky.”

“Jesus Christ, Weather. . . .”

Weather said to Del, “You're gonna have to watch our boy, here. There's nothing he can do about this, but he's going into full Lucas mode.”

Lucas was still shaken when they left, and Del was more curious than ever. “You've been talking to Weather?”

“Bumped into her last night. First time we'd talked . . . forever.”

“She seems different,” Del ventured. The unfinished part of the thought was
like she didn't hate you anymore.

“Time passes,” Lucas said.

 
 
ON THE WAY out to the prison, they talked tactics with Trick.

“According to your brilliant plan,” Trick said, “I sit on my ass until you tell me to walk. Then I come in.”

“Yeah, but when you come in, you come in shining like the fuckin'
sun
,” Del said.

“Shining like the fuckin' sun for Al-Balah,” Trick said in disgust. “If that cocksucker died this afternoon, we'd have to go over to the cathedral and light candles in thanksgiving.”

“You a Catholic?” Lucas asked.

“Fuck no,” Bentoin said. “Fuckin' bead-rattlin', genuflectin', ring-kissin' assholes.”

“Me'n Lucas are Catholic,” Del observed. “Since you got a Frenchy name--”

“You figured wrong,” Bentoin said.

“So what are you?”

Bentoin looked out the car window at the cornfield going by and said, sourly, “An ex-Catholic.”

Lucas started laughing, and then Del, for the first time since Marcy was shot.

 
 
THE INTERVIEW ROOM was painted an indefinite pastel color, as though the painters had a bunch of pastels but not enough of anything, so they poured them altogether and came up with a lime-cream-rose-baby blue, which resolved itself into a pastel sludge. Al-Balah's lawyer, a pretty good three-cushion-billiards player named Laziard, was sitting on a bench with his briefcase by his left foot, reading a pamphlet about items forbidden as gifts to inmates. He looked up when Lucas came in with Del.

“My, my, a deputy chief,” Laziard said. “You must be a little worried. Hey, Del.”

“We figure you're gonna sue us for a billion dollars,” Lucas said.

“You got the number right,” Laziard said genially as Lucas and Del chose spots on the benches.

“So we thought we should show a little concern, just in case we find Trick again,” Lucas said.

“Just in case?” A wrinkle appeared on Laziard's forehead. “I thought Del had him.”

Del shrugged. “I talked to him, but I didn't
arrest
him. I didn't have anything to arrest him
on.
He told me he was checked into the Days Inn down on the strip, and when I snuck out and checked, he
was.
But the next day, when we went down to pick him up, he'd checked out. We just missed him.”

Lucas said, “The problem is, he might've gone back to Panama. The guys in the county attorney's office don't want to hear any of this ‘Del saw him' shit. They want to see
Trick.
”

“What are you telling me?” Laziard demanded. “What . . .”

The door opened in the back wall, and they all turned. Rashid Al-Balah stepped into the room, a guard a step behind him. Al-Balah was a shaved-head black man with a heavy face and two-day beard. He glowered at Lucas, gave a few seconds of hate to Del. The guard pointed him at a bench. Al-Balah sat down and asked Laziard, “How much longer?”

“We're trying to figure that out,” Laziard said.

“What? What're you trying to figure out?” Al-Balah's voice was rising.
“Get me the fuck outa here.”

“There's a problem,” Lucas said. “Trick went away, and the county attorney's office is being a stick-in-the-mud about it. They want to actually see his ass before they do anything. I'm sure we'll find him, sooner or later.”

“Sooner or fuckin' later?”
Al-Balah shouted. “I packed my shit this morning. I'm ready to
go.
Right now, motherfucker.”

“This is not going well,” Del muttered to Lucas.

“What? What'd you say?” Al-Balah was getting angrier.

The guard snapped, “Cool down.” Al-Balah looked at him, and the guard took a half-step forward and set his feet. “Just cool down. Keep your place.”

Al-Balah sagged on the bench. “I packed my shit,” he said to Lucas. “You're supposed to get me the fuck out of here. I packed my shit up, man.”

“We're doing what we can,” Del said. “I'm the guy who brought the whole thing up, you know?”

Lucas jumped in. “I didn't actually come out here myself to talk about cutting you loose. I actually came out with a question.” He looked at Laziard. “A question for your client.”