The main offices of the Atheneum State Bank were off University Avenue three blocks from the state capitol building in St. Paul, in a redbrick building with four white wooden pillars out front. The neighborhood started trending up when the porno movies moved out and the hookers had been pushed farther west, away from the state legislators. The upward trend had stalled, and now the whole strip had a shabby, going-nowhere ambiance, like a squashed paper cup outside a convenience store.
The taps on four of Rodriguez's phonesone home, two business, and a cellwere in place, along with taps on the home and cell phones used by Bill Spooner, an assistant vice president in the commercial loans department.
Lucas and Del drove to the bank in a beat-up city car, trailed by an assistant county attorney named Tim Long. From the parking lot, Lucas called Rose Marie. Rose Marie, who had been waiting for the call, phoned the bank president and asked him to make time for a quick talk with Lucas. She got back to Lucas and said, "He's waiting. Be a little careful: He's one of those hail-fellow types who's always ready to help a member of the legislature, and never forgets when he has."
Lucas said to Del, "See if you can find Spooner's car."
Del nodded. "Crunch him," he said.
Lucas and Long went inside, spoke to the bank president's secretary. She went back into his office and popped out a minute later, followed by the president himself. "Already? I just talked to Rose Marie a couple of minutes ago."
"Traffic was light," Lucas said.
The bank presidents name was Reed. He was a genial man, overweight, a patriotic panoply: red face, white hair, blue eyes; red tie, white shirt, blue suit; an American flag in the corner, with a plastic eagle atop the staff, in gold.
When Lucas outlined the general nature of their questions, Reed leaned back in his leather executive chair and said, "I've known Bill since we were lads. He was six years behind me at Cretin. His parents, God bless 'emthey're both dead nowused to play canasta with my parents. There's never been anything wrong with any of his accounts; he's one of our best loan officers. I was godfather for his oldest son."
"I'm sure there's nothing wrong now," Lucas said. "We just want to talk with him about Mr. Rodriguez. Their personal relationship. Anything he might be able to tell us that could help us in our investigation."
"I don't know that we could help much. Our financial records are confidential"
Long interrupted. "Mr. Reed, we know about your confidentiality requirements, and we're just trying to handle this whole matter as discreetly as possible. If you wish, we can get a subpoena for your loan records, and we can call a squad car and transport Mr. Spooner to Minneapolis for questioning. We thought this would be better. Chief Roux thought it would be better."
"I appreciate that. Senator Roux was a good friend," Reed said. After a moment of silence and a thoughtful inspection of Lucas, he said, "Let's go talk to Billy and see what he has to say."
Billy was a Minnesota WASP, fair-haired, once slight, but now carrying a few too many pounds. He was wearing a gray off-the-rack suit and black lace-up shoes. And he was guilty of something, Lucas thought: His eyes went flat at the introductions, and when they settled into their chairs and Lucas explained what they wanted, he said, "As far as I know, Richard Rodriguez is entirely legitimate. He has a perfect payment record."
"That's ourproblem," Lucas said. "It's a little too perfect. From our review, it appears that he needs a one-hundred-percent residency rate to make his payments. We're wondering why you would give somebody a loan under those conditions."
"A lot of small reasons, and one big one," Spooner said. "The big one was, he helped our minority loan level. In our neighborhood, we have to be sensitive to redlining issues, and as a responsible, hardworking, intelligent minority person, we decided we could go with him as long as the risk wasn't too great. The first building he was interested in was for sale at such a good price that we could have loaned him almost all of the money even if he hadn't had a down payment. But he did have a down payment. Not much, but it was all of his savings, and guaranteed that he'd stay right on top of the business. And he had the minority status, of course. That swung it. After that, with a lot of hard work, he kept his record perfect, and we were always ready to help when he wanted to expand his horizons."
"So he got a great price on the original building," Long said. "What are the chances that he delivered part of the original purchase price to the seller, under the table, to drive down the apparent price?"
"I wouldn't know about that," Spooner said stiffly.
"What are the chances that he uses dope-dealing money to make up shortfalls in tenant rents?" Lucas asked.
"Dope? Richard Rodriguez? I don't think so."
Lucas leaned into Spooner's desk. "If we got a subpoena for your loan records and asked a state examiner to look them over, you think he'd say they met state loan standards?"
"Absolutely. The minority status alone would bring applause from the state banking department." Spooner leaned back and relaxed a hair, the way a fence relaxes when he realizes that a cop doesn't really have anything on him.
Lucas looked at Long and shrugged. Long dipped into his brief-case, found a paper, and handed it to Reed. "It's a subpoena for your loan records."
Reed's face turned a little redder. "I thought we were handling this on a friendly basis."
"We wanted to," Lucas said. "But Bill here is bullshitting us, so we're gonna have to see all the records."
"I'mnot bullshitting you," Spooner said.
"You're bullshitting us, Billy, yes, you are," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what. This case is part of the Alie'e Maison murder investigation. If Rodriguez turns out to be involved, because of his drug dealing, and you're helping him cover up well, then, you're involved. That's called murder one on the TV shows. Murder one in Minnesota is a minimum of thirty years in a cell the size of your desk. You look like you might be young enough to do the whole thirty."
"Wait, wait, wait," Spooner said. "I have absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I want a lawyer. Right now."
"Those are the magic words," Long said to Lucas. "No more questions, and read him his rights."
When they were done with the reading of the rights, Reed agreed to print out the loan records and Long walked out to the parking lot with Lucas. "It's the reading of the rights that scares the shit out of them," he said.
Lucas nodded. "The question is, will Spooner make a call?"
He made the call.
Long went back into the bank and Lucas climbed in the passenger side of the city car. "He's driving the Lexus in the corner," Del said.
Lucas looked down at a silver-toned car nosed in next to a power transformer. "So he's spending some money."
"He's a banker," Del said. "He's gotta have some kind of car to impress the neighbors."
Del took the car to the end of the block and found a spot where they could see Spooner's car. Del's phone rang twenty minutes later, and Long came on. "I'm not going to make lunch. I've got a thing I've got to do with a subpoena," he said.
"He's moving?"
"Absolutely, sweetheart," Long said.
Del said, "He's moving," and a minute later they spotted Spooner pushing through the front door, carrying his briefcase, pulling on a thigh-length black trench coat. He went to the Lexus, tossed the brief-case across the front seat onto the passenger side, and rolled out of the lot. They followed, a block behind, a half-dozen cars between them, past the capitol, down the hill toward downtown St. Paul, where Del closed up and Lucas eased down in the seat.
Halfway through downtown, Spooner took the Lexus into a parking ramp. Del pulled to the side, shoved the gearshift into park, said, "I'll catch him at the Skyway exit. Turn on your phone," and jumped out. When Spooner was out of sight, up the ramp, Lucas walked around the car and went looking for a parking meter.
Del called ten minutes later. "Got him. He's at an attorneys office."
"Goddamnit."
"So what do we do?"
"I'll call you back in two minutes," Lucas said. He punched the Off button, redialed Lane's cell phone number. Lane answered, and Lucas said, "Where's Rodriguez?"
"In his office. I can see his sleeve."
"Nothing going on?"
"A few things. My feet hurt like hell; I've got Homicide's interview notebook on the case, and I'm reading all the interviews; a nine-year-old kid tried to sell me what I believe are counterfeit baseball cards; and the St. Paul cops rousted me. That's about it."
"No trouble with St. Paul?"
"Nah. Just checking on why I'd been standing in the Skyway for two hours, reading a notebook," Lane said.
"Okay. Our guy's at an attorneys office. He's about two blocks from you."
"Let me know if anything happens."
"A Mickey Mantle rookie card's gotta be worth more than twenty, doesn't it?"
"Chump." Lucas redialed Del. "Rodriguez is at his office."
"So"
"So let's hang for a while. Give it an hour, anyway."
Twenty-five minutes into the hour, Del called. "He's moving."
"Where?"
"Looks like the parking garage."
"Goddamnit. Stay with him. If he heads to the car, I'll pick you up where you jumped out."
Five minutes later, Del was back in the car. Lucas drove around to the parking garage exit, and as they picked up Spooner, Del's phone rang. He took it out, listened for a second, said, "Lucas's phone is on now," and then handed it to Lucas. "I'm a fuckin' secretary," he said.
"Your boy made the call," Lester said.
"Yeah? When?"
"Six or seven minutes ago. He was calling from a lawyers office."
"Yeah, we took him there. He's out, and we're on him again. What'd he say?"
"Sounded like he was reading out of a script. He said, 'Mr. Rodriguez, allegations have been made against you by the Minneapolis police. I will no longer be allowed to have any direct dealings with you on the mortgages on your buildings, and I wanted to inform you that in the future your account will be handled by Mrs. Ellen Feldman.' Then Rodriguez said, 'What are you talking about? The police?' And then Spooner said, 'I'm not at liberty to discuss it, but you can get more information from Minneapolis Deputy Chief of Police Lucas Davenport or Mr. Tim Long, assistant Hennepin County Attorney' Then Rodriguez said, 'Is this about the party?' And Spooner says, I'm really not at liberty to discuss it. I suggest you call Chief Davenport or Mr. Long. I'm sorry this had to happen. I felt we had an excellent working relationship. I have to go now. I hope this works out for the best.' Then Rodriguez says, 'Okay Well, thanks for everything, you know.' And that's it."
"Thanks for everything," Lucas said. "He means the phone call."
"Pretty goddamn neat phone call, too," Lester said. "He warns him, but there's nothing in it to hang him with. Either one of them."
After Lucas hung up, they tracked Spooner back to the bank. He drove back slowly, well within the speed limit. When he was inside, Lucas said, "Fuck him. Let's go see Marcy."
Weather was outside the intensive care ward talking to Tom Black. They saw Lucas and Del coming, and Weather smiled and Del said, "Something good happened."
"What?" Lucas asked as they came up.
"She's somewhat awake. Everything's pretty much stabilized. She's still critical, but it's looking pretty good. For the first time."
Lucas went to the ward window and looked in. "Can we go in?"
"Let me get a nurse. They just took a guy in."
The nurse came, said, severely, "One minute. Say hello, and out." She gave them masks to hold over their faces, and led the way in.
Marcy's eyelids were at half-mast. When Lucas, Del, and Black loomed beside her, her eyes opened fractionally, and after a moment, the corners of her lips twitched.
"Sleeping on the job," Black said.
"I ain't signing off on the overtimeyou're still on the Homicide payroll," Lucas said.
"If you die, can I have your gun?" Del asked.
She tried to say something, but Lucas couldn't hear and he leaned forward. Her lips looked parched, almost burnt. "What?"
"Fuck all of you," she whispered, and she turned her head another fraction of an inch.
"She's better," Lucas said, delighted. "She says go fuck ourselves."
Weather said, "I can't believe cops. I never could. The bullshit getsso deep." She was smiling when she said it.
Lucas squatted next to the bed, speaking through the blue mask. "You're hurting," he said, "but you're gonna make it. We're tracking the guy who shot you."
Her head rolled away, and her eyelids drooped again. "Everybody out," the nurse said.
In the hall, Lucas said, "She looked pretty good, huh? She looked pretty good."
"Pretty good," Black said.
"I was amazed," Del said. "She took a fuckin'. 44, man. Man, she looked alot better." He hitched up his jeans, and they all nodded at each other.
"She's not out of the woods," Weather said. "Keep that in mind. It's along trip back."
On the way out the door with Del, Lucas stopped, said, "Hang on a minute," and went back inside. Weather was walking away, back to the interior of the hospital. "Hey, Weather."
She stopped, waited. He came up, took a card out of his ID case, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of it, and said, "Keep an eye on her while you're here, okay? You know the docs better than any of us. If anything changes"
"I'll call," she said. She took the card, and Lucas headed back out.
On the sidewalk, Del said, "What?"
"Gave her my number in case anything happens with Marcy," Lucas lied. She could have gotten to him through the police switchboard, and shehad that number. He'd actually gone back because of a little subconscious twitch: He went back to look at her ears. She was wearing inky blue sapphire earrings, one-carat stones. He recognized them, because he'd given them to her.
He smiled on the way back to the office, and Del said, "Our girl's gonna be all right."
"Maybe," he said.
Back at the office, Lucas put in a call to Louis Mallard at the FBI in Washington. Mallard had enough clout to extract anything from any government computer anywhere. He agreed to find and send along everything available on Rodriguez's Miami company. When he got off the phone with Mallard, Lucas walked down to Hose Marie's office.
"Need a meeting," he said.
"Marcy's awake."
"I know. She's gonna make it."
Rose Marie put a finger to her lips. "Shhh. Don't hex her."
While they were waiting for the meeting to get together, Lane called. "I got bored and walked by Rodriguez's office window. He was working on the computer in his office."
"How many people saw you? The secretary?"
"Maybe. But I was disguised as a cool guy, which, for me, takes no effort, and I put a little shine on her, through the window."
"Lane, you fucking"
"Anyway, Rodriguez was signed on to E-Trade."
"E-Trade."
"Yeah. I bet he's scared and dumping stock."
"Like I was saying, you're a fucking genius." Lucas called Mallard back. "Can you get into E-Trade records?"
"If I wanted to," Mallard said.
Del came to the meeting, along with Frank Lester; Towson, the county attorney; and Long, the assistant county attorney, just back from the Atheneum bank with a pile of paper. No public relations people.
"I wanted to make sure everybody knows what we're doing," Lucas said. "We're looking at this guy Rodriguez, and I will tell you this, just based on feel and experience and a few things we know about him: He killed Alie'e and Sandy Lansing."
"You're pretty sure," Towson said.
"Pretty sure. Lansing was dealing several kinds of dope to rich people and wanna-bes, working for Rodriguez. Rodriguez is at the party. They have some kind of conflict, and Rodriguez kills her right there in the hallway. Maybe it's even an accidentthe ME's saying it looks like her head was smashed against a doorjamb. So Rodri
guez tried to stuff her in the closet and is surprised by Alie'e, who was in the bedroom. Maybe Alie'e heard the noise of Lansing's head hitting the doorjambor maybe she just woke up at the wrong time. Anyway, she sees something, and Rodriguez takes her out. At this point, he walks away, maybe down the hall to the next room, and goes out the window. Or maybe he just walks through the crowd and drifts away."
"What do we have for sure?" Towson asked.
"We have the fact that Rodriguez was a punk in Detroit, came here with no money, and got rich fast. We have a guy who'll tell us that he's a dope wholesaler, and that Sandy Lansing worked for him, sending dope. I don't doubt that once we start working on that angle, now that we've got his name, we'll be able to find a few other ties between them. We've got Rodriguez at the party. We've got a guyDerrick Dealwho knew Lansing pretty well, and thought she might be selling a little dope; and he was a guy who would do a little blackmail if it looked profitable. He almost certainly knew who her boss was, because a day after I talked to him, he was murdered in a way that was at least reminiscent of the way Alie'e and Lansing were killed: no passion, just brutal efficiency."
"I don't see how you tie Deal to Rodriguez," Rose Marie said.
"I don't, directly. What I'm saying is, Deal didn't know Alie'e. So if he was going to blackmail somebody for murder, it had to be somebody tied to Lansing. The only person at that party tied to Lansing, as far as we know, was Rodriguez."
Long looked at Towson. "We'd need some kind of color chart, or maybe a PowerPoint presentation, to sell that to a jury."
Towson shook his head. "We're not at a jury yet. We need more."
"We're just starting on the guy," Del said.
Long leaned into the discussion. "I got all the paper from Atheneum. Spooner's boss was looking over my shoulder, and you know what? If we push the guy, he'll tell us the loans shouldn't have been made. The goddamn things are dirty. Rodriguez was paying him off."
"Can we crack him?" Towson asked.
"I don't know. He's sort of a nebbish, but he's scared, and if he keeps his mouth shut I mean, he's got a lawyer, and if he claims that the loans were on the up-and-up and keeps going back to this minority business, and if Rodriguez doesn't talk, there's not much we can get him on."
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