John Sandford - Prey 01 - Rules of Prey

by Rules of Prey

  "You fuck...."

  Lucas glanced out the windows toward the street. Nobody was looking in. He reached down and grabbed the flesh between Short's nostrils between a thumb and forefinger and drove his thumbnail into it. Short arched his head as though he were being electrocuted and dragged at Lucas' hand with his, but Lucas hung on and pressed his other thumb into Short's throat below his Adam's apple so he couldn't scream. They struggled for a few seconds and then Lucas let go and backed off, and Short doubled up in the chair, his face buried in his hands, a long groan squeezing from his mouth.

  Lucas leaned over him and wiped his fingers on Short's shirt, his face close to Short's.

  "Who's her pimp?" Lucas asked quietly.

  "Aw, c'mon, Davenport."

  "If you think that hurt, I've got a couple more in places you wouldn't even believe," Lucas said. "Don't show, either."

  "Sparks," he mumbled. His voice was almost inaudible. "Don't tell him I told you."

  "Who?"

  "Jefferson Sparks. She works for Sparks."

  "Sparky. God damn." Lucas patted Short on the shoulder. "Thanks, Vincent. The police appreciate the cooperation of our citizens."

  Short looked up at him, his eyes rimmed with red, tears running down his cheeks.

  "Get out of here, you fuck."

  "If this isn't right, if it's not Sparky, I'll be back," Lucas promised. He smiled at Short. "Have a nice day."

  Outside, they were moving the body, wheeling it out into the flaring lights of the TV cameras. The vice cops were standing in a small group by the sidewalk, watching, when Lucas walked up.

  "Your old pal tell you anything?"

  "She worked for Jefferson Sparks," Lucas said.

  "Sparky," one of the cops said enthusiastically. "I do believe I know where he's staying."

  "Pick him up," said Lucas. "Soliciting or something. We'll talk to him downtown tomorrow morning."

  "Sure."

  ***

  Anderson was talking to the medical examiner. When he finished, he walked over to Lucas, shaking his head.

  "Nothing?" asked Lucas.

  "Not a thing."

  "You're dragging the neighborhood for witnesses?"

  "Got guys all over the place. Won't know anything until tomorrow."

  "We got a name on the pimp," Lucas said. "Vice is going to look for him. Probably have him tomorrow."

  "I hope he's got something," Anderson said. "This is getting old."

  ***

  Lucas worked on his game for half an hour, editing the scenarios. It was the worst part of the job. The finishing touches were never done. With the murder of Heather Brown, he couldn't focus on the work.

  He quit at two o'clock, ate a cup of strawberry yogurt, checked the doors, and turned out the lights. He had been in bed for ten minutes when the doorbell rang. Crawling out of bed, he tiptoed into the workroom so he could look out a window down the length of the house to the front door.

  The doorbell rang again as he peeked out. Annie McGowan, alone in the streetlight, self-conscious as she waited by the door. Lucas sat down with his back to the wall, staring into the dark room. Jennifer was pregnant. Carla was waiting at the cabin. Lucas loved women, new women, different women. Loved to talk to them, send them flowers, roll around in the night. Annie McGowan was stunning, a woman with the face of Helen and what promised to be an exquisite body, pink nipples, pale, solid flesh.

  And she was dumb as a stump. Lucas thought about it, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Outside, Annie McGowan waited, and after another minute turned away from the house and started back toward her car. Lucas stood up and peered through a crack between the curtain and the wall as she opened the car door, hesitated, looked back at the house. The window opened vertically, with a crank. His hand was on the crank and it would take only a second to open it, call out to her before she got away. He didn't move. She slid into the driver's seat, pulled the door shut, and backed out of the drive.

  In another second she was gone. Lucas walked back to the bedroom, lay down, and tried to sleep.

  Visions of Annie...

  CHAPTER

  15

  Lucas' office door was open and the vice cop ambled in and plopped down in one of the extra chairs.

  "Sparky's gone," he said.

  "Damn. Nothing's coming easy," Lucas said.

  "We found his place, down on Dupont, but he split last night," the vice cop said. "The guy who lives upstairs said Sparky came home about midnight, threw his shit in the car, and took off with one of his ladies. Said it didn't look like he was coming back."

  "He knew about Brown," said Lucas, leaning back and planting his feet on the desktop.

  "Yeah. Looks like."

  "So where'd he go?"

  The vice cop shrugged. "We're asking around. He's got a couple of other women. We've heard they're working a sauna out on Lake Street. Used to work at a place called the Iron Butterfly, but that's closed now. So we're looking."

  "Relatives?"

  "Don't know."

  "When did we last have him in?" Lucas asked.

  "'Bout a year ago, I guess. Gross misdemeanor, soliciting for prostitution."

  "He do time?"

  "Three months in the workhouse."

  "File upstairs?"

  "Yeah. I could get it."

  "Never mind," Lucas said. "I'm not doing anything. I'll walk over and take a look."

  "We'll keep looking for him," the vice cop said. "Daniel's all over our backs."

  ***

  Lucas flipped the lock on his office door and was pulling it closed when the phone rang. He stepped back inside and picked it up.

  "Lucas? This is Jennifer. Are we going out tonight?"

  "Sure. Seven o'clock?" An image of Carla flashed into his mind, her back arched, her breasts flattened, her mouth half-open.

  Carla Ruiz.

  Jennifer Carey, pregnant. "Yeah, that'd be fine. Pick me up here?"

  "See you at seven."

  ***

  The maddog was waiting for files in the clerk's office when Lucas walked in. The maddog recognized him immediately and forced himself to look back at the file he was holding. Lucas paid no attention to him. He walked through the swinging gate, behind the service counter, and across the room to the supervisor's cubicle. He stuck his head in the door and said something the maddog couldn't quite make out. The supervisor looked up from her desk and laughed and Lucas went in and perched on the edge of her desk.

  The detective had an easy way about him. The maddog recognized and envied it. The files supervisor was an iron-girdled courthouse veteran who had seen one of everything, and Davenport had her fluttering like a teenage girl. As he watched, Lucas suddenly turned and looked at him and their eyes touched briefly. The maddog recovered and looked down at the file again.

  "Who's the dude at the counter?" Lucas asked.

  The supervisor looked around him at the maddog, who dropped the file in the return basket and headed for the door. "Attorney. Can't remember the firm, but he's been around a lot lately. He had that Barin kid, you know, that rich kid who drove into the crowd..."

  "Yeah." The maddog disappeared through the door and Lucas dismissed him. "Jefferson Sparks. Bad guy. Pimp. I need the latest on him."

  "I'll get it. You can use Lori's desk. She's out sick," the supervisor said, pointing at an empty desk behind the business counter.

  Sparks had three recent files, each with a slender sheaf of flimsies. Lucas read through them and found a half-dozen references to the Silk Hat Health Club. He picked up the phone, called vice, and asked for the detective he had talked to that morning.

  "Is the Silk Hat still run by Shirley Jensen?" he asked when the detective came on the line.

  "Yup."

  "I find the name in a couple of places in Sparky's file. Could that be where his women are working?"

  "Could be. Come to think of it, Shirley used to do the books on the Butterfly."

  "Thanks. I'll ru
n out there."

  "Stay in touch."

  Lucas hung up, tossed the files in the return basket, and glanced at his watch. Just after noon. Shirley should be working.

  The Silk Hat was a black-painted storefront squeezed between a used-clothing store and a furniture-rental agency. The neon sign in the window said "Si k Hat t ealth Club" and the glass in both the window and door had been painted as black as the siding. There was a small wrought-iron door light over the door and a wise guy had spray-painted it red. Or maybe not a wise guy, Lucas thought. Maybe the owner.

  Lucas pushed through the door into a small waiting room. Two plastic chairs sat on a red shag carpet behind a coffee table. A fish tank full of guppies perched on the sill of the blacked-out window. There were a half-dozen well-thumbed copies of Penthouse magazine on the coffee table. The chairs were facing a six-foot-long business counter that looked like it might have been stolen from a doctor's office. A door beside the counter led into the back of the store.

  As Lucas stepped into the waiting room, he heard a buzzer sound in the back, and a few seconds later a young woman in a low-cut black dress stepped up behind the counter. She was chewing gum, and a June-bug tattoo was just visible on the swell of her left breast. She looked like Betty Boop but smelled like Juicy Fruit.

  "Yah?"

  "I want to talk to Shirley," Lucas said.

  "I don't know if she's here."

  "Tell her Lucas Davenport is waiting and if she doesn't get her fat ass out here, I'm going to fuck the place up."

  The woman looked at him for a second, working her jaw until the gum snapped. She was not impressed. "Pretty tough," she said laconically. "I got a guy here you might want to talk to. Before you fuck the place up."

  "Who?"

  She looked him over and decided he might recognize the name. "Bald Peterson."

  "Bald? Yeah. Tell him to get his ass out here too," Lucas said enthusiastically. He reached under his jacket and took out the P7 and the woman's eyes widened and she put up her hands as though to fend off a bullet. Lucas grinned at her and kicked the front panel of the counter and it splintered and he kicked it again and the woman turned and started running toward the back.

  "Bald, you cocksucker, come out here," Lucas shouted into the back. He reached across the counter, grabbed the bottom side of the top sheet and pulled and it came up with a groan and he let it go and he kicked the front panel again and a piece of board broke off. "Bald, you motherfucker..."

  Bald Peterson was six and a half feet tall and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds. He had had a minor career as a boxer, a slightly bigger one on the pro wrestling tour. Some people on Lake Street were sure he was psychotic. Lucas was sure he was not. Bald had attacked Lucas once, years before, when Lucas was still on patrol. It happened in a parking lot outside a nightclub, one-on-one. Bald used his fists. Lucas used a nine-inch lead-weighted sap wrapped in bull leather. Bald went down in six seconds of the first round. And after he went down, Lucas used his feet and a heavy steel flashlight and broke several of the bones in Bald's arms, most of the bones in his hands, the lower bones in both legs, the bones in the arches of his feet, his jaw, his nose, and several ribs. He also kicked him in the balls a half-dozen times.

  While they were waiting for the ambulance, Bald woke up and Lucas gripped him by the shirt and told him that if he ever had any more trouble with him, he would cut off his nose, his tongue, and his dick. Lucas was suspended for investigation of possible use of excessive force. Bald was in the hospital for four months and a wheelchair for another six.

  If Bald had been psychotic, Lucas thought, he would have come after Lucas with a gun, a knife, or, if he was really crazy, with his fists, as soon as he could walk. He didn't. He never looked at Lucas again, and walked wide around him.

  "Bald, you dickhead..." Lucas shouted. He kicked the front panel of the desk and it caved in. There was a clattering on a back stairs and he stopped kicking and Shirley Jensen hurried up the hallway toward the counter. Lucas put the P7 away.

  "You asshole," Jensen yelled.

  "Shut up, Shirley," Lucas said. "Where's Bald?"

  "He's not here."

  "The other cunt said he was."

  "He's not, Davenport, I mean, Jesus Christ on a crutch, look at this mess..." Jensen was in her late forties, her face lined from years of sunlamps, bourbon, cigarettes, and potatoes. She was a hundred pounds overweight. The fat bobbled under her chin, on her shoulders and upper arms, and quivered like jelly beneath her gold lame belt. Her face crinkled and Lucas thought she might cry.

  "I want to know where Sparky went."

  "I didn't know he was gone," she said, still looking at the wreckage of the counter.

  Lucas leaned forward until his face was only four inches from her nose. Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed. "Shirley, I'm going to tear this place up. My neck is on the line with this maddog killer, and Sparky might have some information I need. I'm going to wait here..." He looked at his watch, as though timing her. "Five minutes. Then I'm coming over the counter. You go find out where he is."

  "Sparky knows something about the maddog?" The idea startled her.

  "That was one of his girls who got ripped last night. The maddog's starting on hookers. It's a lot easier than scouting out the straights."

  "Don't kick my counter no more," Shirley said, and she turned and waddled down the hallway and out of sight.

  A few seconds later the front door opened and Lucas stepped back and away from it. A narrow man with a gray face, thin shoulders, and a seventy-dollar suit stepped inside, blinked at the ruined counter, and looked at Lucas.

  "Jeez, what happened?"

  "There's a police raid going on," Lucas said cheerfully. "But if you just want to exercise, you know, like push-ups, and drink some fruit juice, that's okay. Go on back."

  The narrow man's Adam's apple bobbed twice and he said, "That's okay," and disappeared out the door. Lucas shrugged and dropped into one of the plastic chairs and picked up a Penthouse. "I didn't believe things like this really happened," he read, "but before I tell you about it, maybe I should describe myself. I'm a junior at a big midwestern university and the coeds around here say I'm pretty well-equipped. A girlfriend once measured me out at nine inches of rock-hard-"

  "Davenport..." Shirley emerged from the back.

  "Yeah." He dropped the magazine on the table.

  "Don't know where he is exactly, what hotel," she said, "but it's like in Cedar Rapids, some downtown hotel-"

  "Iowa?"

  "Yeah. He trolls through there a couple of times a year, Sioux City, Des Moines, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids. So one of his girls says he's down there, she don't know exactly the place, but she says it's a hotel downtown."

  "Okay." Lucas nodded. "But if he's not there..."

  "Fuck you, Davenport, you broke my desk."

  ***

  Jennifer liked the flowers. Each table had two carnations, one red and one white, in a long-necked vase. The restaurant was run by a Vietnamese family, refugees who left a French restaurant behind in Saigon. The old man and his wife financed it, their kids ran the place and cooked, the in-laws worked the tables and bar and cash register, the ten-year-old grandchildren bused the tables and washed up.

  "The big problem with this place," Jennifer said, "is that it's about to be discovered."

  "That's okay," Lucas said. "They deserve it."

  "I suppose." Jennifer looked at the red wine in her glass, watching the light reflections thrown through the Venetian blinds from the street. "What are we going to do?" she asked after a moment of silence.

  Lucas leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "We can't go on like this. You've really hammered me. Daniel knows about our relationship, and every time something breaks in the press, he's looking at me. Even if it's Channel Eight."

  "I'm done reporting, at least for now," she answered. She tilted her head and let her hair fall away from her face, and Lucas' eyes traveled arou
nd the soft curve of her chin and he thought he was in love.

  "Yeah, but if you get a lead... tell me you won't feed it to one of your pals," he said.

  Jennifer sipped the wine, set the glass on the table, ran her finger around its rim, and suddenly looked up into his eyes. "Did you sleep with McGowan?"

  "Goddammit, Jennifer," Lucas said in exasperation. "I did not. Have not."