"Whoa!" He reached out and, a second later, pulled Trick Bentoin into the room by his shirtsleeve.
"Hi, guys," Bentoin said, shining like the fuckin' sun.
"You pricks," Laziard said.
Al-Balah was stunned, but after gaping at Bentoin for a second, he started to laugh, and a minute later, was laughing so hard that he had to lean on his attorney for support. So hard that Lucas, Del, Laziard, and Bentoin started to laugh, and finally, even the guard.
On the way back to town, Del's phone rang. He answered, listened for a second, and said, "Yeah, he's right here. He just hasn't turned his fuckin' phone on." He handed the phone to Lucas. "It's Frank."
Lester was calling with three pieces of news. "We're rolling on this multiple-personality idea. The Olsons were murdered, dude. The shrink called it. Mrs. Olson's head was ontop of some blood spray from her old man, and from the way the spray hit her face, she was looking toward him when she was shot. When her body was recovered, she was looking straight up toward the ceiling."
"So he was killed first," Lucas said.
"Absolutely But the gun was next to him."
"All right," Lucas said. "What happened to that Bloom guy we were checking out?"
"Black checked him, and isn't getting anyplace. The guy seems really straight."
"We got a better name," Lucas said. "A Richard Rodriguez. He's on the list."
"How good?"
"Very good. Have you seen Lane around there? He should be back from Fargo."
"Yeah. He's here," Lester said.
"Get him on the Rodriguez guy. Full bio. We'll be back in half an hour."
"See you then."
"How's Marcy?" Lucas asked.
"Same, I guess. I checked this morning when I came in, and nobody's said anything else."
"Half hour," Lucas said.
Things were beginning to move, like watching the ice go off the river in spring. Nothing happening, nothing happening, and then boom; breakup.
When they got back, they walked Trick over to the county attorney's office, left him, and headed back to City Hall. Lane was waiting outside Lucas's office with a wad of paper in his hand. He saw them coming, and walked down the hall waving the paper.
"He's our guy. He's a dealer, anyway. Moved here from Detroit eleven years ago, got busted a couple of times for vagrancy. Now he owns a bunch of small apartment buildings here and in St. Paul and out in Washington County, through a real-estate investment company in Miami." Lane was talking at a hundred miles and hour, and they were swirling around each other in the hall, looking at pieces of paper. "He lists himself as an apartment manager on his state tax returns. I looked at the returns going all the way back, and he showed up nine years ago at twenty-two thousand, and now he's up to ninety, but he never lists his ownership anywhere. He doesn't have to."
"Goddamnit, this looks good," Lucas said.
Del nodded. "Hiding the money. But I wonder why he's still selling dope if he's got the apartments?"
"He pyramided them, I think," Lane said. "He can't stop yet. Maybe he's got a pal at the bank who knows he has another income, "cause it looks like he bought the first apartment with a cash down-paymentand nobody asked any questionsthen used the equity in that one to finance the next one, paid on that a while, then used the equity in the two of them to buy the third, and then the equity in the three to buy another one, and kept doing that until he got where he is now. The total assessed value in twelve buildings is nine point five million, and they're really worth twelve or thirteen. But his own money, he's got maybe a million into them."
"The rents don't cover the payments?"
"Oh, they cover them, barely, as long as he never has a vacancy," Lane said. "But you're never a hundred percent in apartmentsnot for long, anyway. What he's doing is, if somebody moves out, he keeps paying the rent out of the dope money until he gets another tenant. I bet he's getting a lot of his maintenance done on the underground economy, paying in cash. So the dope money is invisible. It just goes away."
"And he gets paid out of Miami, and nobody looks at that up here," Del said.
"That's right," said Lane. "He files all of his taxes, he's clean. A few more years of this, and he can sell the whole thing out. Pay some capital gains, and he's a multimillionaire."
"What happens if the dope stops?" Lucas asked.
"Can't stop," said Lane. "He needs a hundred percent occupancy to pay his financing costs, and the only way he can get a hundred percent is to pay the rents on the vacant apartments himself."
"Strange nobody noticed," Lucas said.
"How they gonna notice?" Lane asked.
Lucas and Del looked at each other, thought about it for a moment, then Lucas shrugged. "I don't know."
"I talked to some guys up at the assessors office, and they don't know a way," Lane said.
And Del said, "You know what it reminds me of? The Namiami Entertainment porno houses."
Namiami Entertainment was a mob-related company out of Naples, Florida, that bought three porno theaters around the Twin Cities. The Cities liked them because they'd agreed to business conditions that were more restrictive than the previous owners would agree to. Namiami had done away with the jerk-off-booth peep shows, ended the sale of adult novelties, had taken down outside advertising signs, and though they still ran porno films in the theaters, had generally blended into their neighborhoods. They'd operated for years before the tax people got curious about how they managed to get seventy or eighty percent of theater capacity for their film showings; a little investigation suggested that actual capacity was more like ten percent. The theaters, it turned out, were the most excellent device for laundering large numbers of small bills.
"So what we got," Lucas said, "is a dead woman who dealt dope to rich people. She's killed at a party where her dope-dealer boss happens to be, and who claims he didn't know her. Nobody else seems to have a motivemost people barely know her. But one guy who does know her, Derrick Deal, all he has to do is think about it, and he figures out who killed her. He must've known Rodriguez."
"And he did it without even knowing that Rodriguez was at the party," Del said. "He didn't have our list."
"Right. And Derrick's not above a little blackmail. He tries it, and gets himself killed for his trouble," Lucas said.
"Gotta be this guy," Lane said. "Nothing else fits."
"What'd he say when we talked to him?"
"Says he got to the party late, never saw Alie'e, didn't know Lansing. Got bored, and left around two o'clock," Lane said.
"So he admits he was there pretty late."
"Yeah."
"Let's talk to Sallance Hanson about this," Lucas said. To Del: "Lets go see Marcy, and then go see Hanson. See what she knows about Rodriguez."
"Okay."
And to Lane: "Find this Rodriguez. Don't approach him, just spot him for us. Stay with him. Start tracking him."
When Lucas and Del walked into the hospital, a nurse saw them coming and cut them off. "There's been a problem. They've had to take Officer Sherrill back into the operating room."
"What?"
She looked at her watch. "About fifteen minutes ago, they decided they had to go back in."
"Ah, Jesus," Lucas said. "How bad?"
The nurse shook her head. "I don't know. I know they were watching her blood pressure, and they were worried about it. Dr. Hirschfeld made the call about a half hour ago. She was pretty strong when she went in, though."
"Was she awake?"
"No."
"How long will they be in there?" He looked down the hall toward the emergency operating theater.
"There's no way to tell. Until she's fixed."
Lucas looked at Del. "I told you man, I got a bad feeling."
Del asked the nurse, "Have you seen Dr. Weather Karkinnen around?"
"Yes. She was down asking about Officer Sherrill just a few minutes ago. I think she's doing her morning rounds."
"Let's go," Lucas said.
T
hey tracked her down in the surgery wards, talking to the parents of a child who'd had some reconstruction work after a car accident. Lucas stuck his head in the room, and Weather saw him and said, "I'll be just a minute."
They waited in the hall, listening to the murmur of voices, Lucas pacing, until Weather came out. "I don't think it's too bad," she said. "I think it's that one leak."
"They said she was pretty strong," Del said.
"Well" Weather's eyes slid away from Lucas. "She was in a lot better physical condition than most people who come in."
"Aw, man, you're saying she wasn't that strong."
"Lucas, this had to be done. If they'd waited, she would have gotten weaker, and that would have been worse. Hirschfeld thought he had to go in now."
"Is she gonna make it?"
Weather nodded once, quickly. "Yes." This time her eyes held on to his.
Sallance Hanson knew Rodriguez only slightly. "He's quite a respected real estate investor, but he's not part of the usual group. The group that comes to my parties. Do you think he's the one? Who killed Alie'e?"
"We're just doing a second round on everybody," Lucas lied. He went back to Rodriguez. "I'm curious about the investor part. Our preliminary workup showed him as an employee an apartment manager, not an investor."
"Well, like I said, I don't know him that well, but that's not the way he talks. That's not the way he dresses, either. He's a coarse man, but he has a nice taste in clothes. So do you, by the way." She reached out, folded back the lapel on Lucas's jacket, read the label, and asked, "Where'd you get this?"
"Barneys."
"Really. Nice material. You went to New York?"
"I have a friend there. I visit sometimes," Lucas said. He pushed the topic back to Rodriguez. "Why is he coarse? What makes you think that?"
"He's just Every once in a while, something slips out. He'll say, 'twat,' or something. A lot of guys say 'twat,' you know, when they're looking for an effect, or they're trying to shock you or piss you off. I even know one guy who tried to tell me it was a variation of twit."
Lucas grinned. "He had to be a moron."
"Yes, well yes. But with Richie I've heardoverheardRichard say it sort of casually. Like that was the word he'd normally use in that place, and if he said 'woman,' it was because he was trying to be polite. He's a coarse man, with a layer of politeness that he learned somewhere. Maybe a book or something."
"Do you know anything about his financial dealings?"
"No, no. Nothing. Although every time I talked to him, that's what he wanted to talk about. He was always complaining about his tenantslate with the rent, or skipping out, or whatever."
Del chipped in. "You never saw him with Sandy Lansing?"
"I just don't remember."
"You know Lansing was dealing drugs."
She looked at Del for a moment, then at Lucas, then back to Del. "Look, I know I've talked to my lawyer, and he says telling you this is no crime I know some people at the party were using drugs. And I'd heard that you could sometimes get something from Sandy. But I didn't want to slander a dead woman."
Del leaned back on the couch. He was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and a ragged thirty-year-old political T-shirt on which the words "Lick Dick in '72" were barely legible. He grinned, showing his yellow teeth. "You oughta tell that to Derrick Deal."
"Derrick?" She was puzzled.
"A guy we know," Del said. "He's in the icebox down at the morgue."
"Right up to that point, I was trying to make nice with her," Lucas said when they were out on the sidewalk.
"Fuck the bitch. She's one of those people who'll drive you to communism," Del said. He scratched the side of his face; he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. "'After we see about Marcy, maybe you oughta talk to your friend Bone."
"Not a bad idea," Lucas said. "But first" He took out his cell phone, turned it on, and punched in a number.
Lane answered. "Yo."
"This is Lucas. You find him?"
"I'veseen him. I took Hendrix along, Hendrix interviewed him after the party. He's got an office in St. Paul, on the street level down from a Skyway, and we can see him in his office."
"You can see him now?"
"No, but I can see the door he's gotta come out. I'm with him."
"Let's get some pictures of himwe might want to take them around."
"Okay."
"And if he gets closer to Minneapolis, call me. I'll leave the phone on. I'm probably gonna want to look at him this afternoon, wherever he is."
Marcy was out of the operating room and back in the recovery room. Tom Black was standing in the corridor outside the operating suite with a nurse; when Lucas and Del walked in, Black stepped toward them. "She came through it okay. They had a pretty good leak, but they stopped it, and everything else seems to be holding."
"But she's not awake."
"They're keeping her asleep. They want everything tying together before she wakes up and starts moving around."
They talked about that for a minute: the way Lucas had been tied down once when he got shot in the throat, and hadn't been able to move his head for three days; and about the pinking-shears incident, when Del's hips had been immobilized for two days. Then Del said, "I'm gonna go see this gal over at the BCA. See if the state's got anything on Rodriguez. What're you gonna do?"
Lucas looked at his watch. "I've got a date, God help me."
Catrin was sitting; in a back booth, facing the door, when Lucas arrived. He smiled when he saw her, and she nodded and then paid a lot of attention to picking up a cup of coffee and taking a sip.
"Hey." He slid into the booth on the opposite side and waved at a waitress.
"I hope I'm not tearing your day apart," she said. She'd dressed down this time, in jeans and a cornflower blue shirt that didn't seem to have a buttona subtle, outdoorsy peek-a-boo blouse. "I was watching the Alie'e thing on television, and it seems like people are going crazy."
Lucas nodded and tried to keep his eyes on her face. "It's worse than I've ever seen it. We've had some bad ones before, but this is nuts."
"Are you making any progress? Or can't you tell me?"
"If we were making progress, I might not be able to tell you, but since we aren't, I can tell you. We aren't."
The waitress came by, and they both ordered salads and coffee.
Then they spent a couple of minutes in dragging chitchat until Catrin said, "I called you up because you're the only person I can call up and talk to. I'm in pretty bad shape."
"You look terrific. You even look happy."
"More like anesthetized," she said. Then she shook her head. "I shouldn't be here."
"Why not?"
"I can't even tell you that. I mean, I would tell you if I knew."
"Have a little trouble sleeping? Can't stop your head going around, big dark dreams keeping you up?"
She tilted her head to one side and looked at him curiously. "I'm not suffering from depression, if that's what you're asking. But you did, huh? I recognize the description."
"Yeah."
"I had a friend with the problem. We were worried about her. She eventually got straightened out."
"Chemicals."
"Of course. What'd you do?"
"I had this superstition about chemicals, so I just waited until it went away. I knew what was going on, and I read about it, and in most cases, it'll go away. So I waited. I hope to Jesus it doesn't happen again, but if it does, I'll do the chemicals. I'm not going through it again."
"Good call," she said. "But my problem it's the good old midlife crisis, Lucas."
"Haven't really had mine yet," he said.
"Knowing you, you probably won't. Not until you're about sixty-five, and realize that you're not married and you don't have any grandchildren, and then you'll wonder what happened."
"I could have grandchildren," Lucas said, a little truculently. "I've got a kid."
"Who you don't see much."
"What
are we talking about here?" he asked, suddenly irritated.
"Maybe I'm dragging you into your midlife crisis with mine," she said. The waitress came with the salads and nobody said anything until she was gone, and then Catrin said, "Way back when, after I left you, and you didn't call"
"I called."
"Yeah. Twice. If you'd have called four times, I would've come back. The next time I saw you, you were walking around with some skinny blonde with a terrific ass and these little bell-bottoms, and you stopped on a street corner and she tried to stick her tongue down to your tonsils."
Now Lucas blushed. "I don't even remember," he said.
She maneuvered a lettuce leaf into her mouth and crunched on it, watching him. He pushed his salad bowl away and waited. "Anyway" she said, "About two days after I saw you with the blonde, I met Jack and we started dating and I liked him a lot and I liked his parents and they liked me, and my parents were delighted, he was one year away from his M.D. So we just got married and he did his hitch in the Army and then we went down to Lake City and bought a house and had kids and dogs and sailboats and goddamnit"testing the word, goddamnit "here I am, twenty-five years later. What happened tome? I thought I was gonna have a movie, but all I've ever been is the woman in the background of somebody else's movie."
She thought about that, and poked her salad fork at Lucas and said, "That's what we're talking about. Metaphors. The other day when we met, I used that movie metaphor. It just jumped up and I said it. I've been thinking about it ever since. When'smy movie?"
Lucas sat looking at her for a long moment, and Catrin said, "Say something," and Lucas sighed and said, "If I could only figure out a way to run for the door without freakin' out the restaurant."
She sat back and didn't quite snarl at him, "You'd run for the door?"
"Catrin I know women who run businesses and make a zillion dollars a year and drive around in Mercedes-Benzes and every night they go home and wonder what the hell happened, how they could've forgotten to have kids. They're forty-five years old and have everything but kids, and that's all they think about: no kids. Then I meet people like you who have these great kids and they're all messed up because they're not running General Mills."
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