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 bedit 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?" Dell 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 waslike 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."
"Men 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'tarrest him. I didn't have anything to arrest himon. He told me he was checked into the Days Inn down on the strip, and when I snuck out and checked, hewas. 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 attorneys office don't want to hear any of this 'Del saw him' shit. They want to seeTrick."
"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 attorneys 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 togo. 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."
"A question?"
"You know about the Alie'e Maison case," Lucas said to Al-Balah. "There was another woman killed the same night, the same place."
"Yeah, yeah, I been seeing it on my TV," Al-Balah said.
"This woman, Sandy Lansing, she was dealing. But she was just the street hookup, we don't know who was running her. We'd like to find out, and we thought you might know. You know all that shit."
Al-Balah shook his head. "Fuck you."
"All right." Lucas stood up. "I figured there wasn't much chance."
"When you gonna get me out of here?" Al-Balah asked.
"Soon as we find Trick. We've got some staffing problems with this Alie'e thing, but we can probably spring a guy on it. You know, half-time, anyway. As soon as the Alie'e thing is done with. If Trick hasn't gone back to Panama or something. I mean, I'll bet you're out by spring. Summer at the latest."
Al-Balah almost got up this time, and the guard stepped away from the wall: "Spring? Fuckin' spring?"
Lucas shrugged. "It's this goddamn Alie'e thing. We can't catch a break. We're working on it."
"Richie Rodriguez," Al-Balah said. His lawyer said, "Stop!" but Al-Balah continued. "The bitch was run by Richie Rodriguez, who gots a place in Woodbury. He gotta a whole bunch of apartment buildings or some shit."
Del looked at Lucas and said, "There's a Richard Rodriguez on the party list."
"That's him. Richard," Al-Balah said. "You call him 'Dick' if you want to piss him off."
"Goddamn it," Laziard said.
Lucas looked at Al-Balah and said, "Thanks. We'll push the Trick Bentoin thing. We owe you."
"You owe me, and you gotta get me outa here. I'm fuckin'innocent ." Al-Balah was pleading now.
"Yeah, well more or less," Lucas said. He took a step toward the outer door, following Del.
Laziard asked, "Will I hear from you this afternoon?"
Before Lucas could answer, Del, who'd opened the door, said,
"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.
They 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."
She'd wiped her mouth with a napkin, and now tossed the napkin into the middle of her unfinished salad. Her eyes were bright and a little too wide, and he started to remember her temper. He thought, Uh-oh, and she said, her voice rising a notch, "So all I'm going through is some kind of routine female bullshit that I'll get over."
He shook his head. "No. You see women thinking along these lines, and about half the time it ends in disaster. They walk on their old man and their kids and they get their freedom and they wind up living in a crummy apartment and selling cupcakes in the local foo-foo dessert bar. If you ask them if they'd go back, they think a long time and most of them say, There's no way to go back,' but if they could, on some kind of negotiated terms, they would."
"What about the other half, the ones who don't walk?"
"Then, they come to some kind of accommodation, but I'm not sure how happy they ever are, not having tried it."
"So you're saying I'm fucked," she said.
"Well, you've got a problem. You've got to think about it a long time."
She looked away and said, "I'm thinking about moving out. I didn't tell you that the other day. I wanted to impress you with how wonderful I was, after all these years."
"Does your husband know?" Lucas asked.
"At some level, maybebut he wouldn't want to think about it. I mean, he seems happy enough. He's got all the prestige and his patients like him and he's delivered half the kids in town and we've got a sailing club and he's got a hunting shack across the river in Wisconsin, and all his buddies."
"You'vegot friends, too, don't you?"
"Housewives. Waiting for death. Three or four of them have actually taken off."
"What happened to them?"
"They're selling cupcakes in foo-foo dessert bars," she said, and grinned at him.
"Not really."
"One sells real estate and not very well. One works in a decorating business and doesn't make much. One went back to school and became a social worker and got a job in St. Paul, and she's okay. One's a waitress who's trying to paint."
"And you'd take pictures. Photographs."
"Maybe. You think I couldn't?"
"I don't even know how you'd go about it."
"It's not like I'd be broke. Like I said the other day, we'vegot money."
"So why don't you just go ahead and do what you want, without walking? Just tell him, 'Look, I'm gonna be busy for the next couple of years. Remind me to stop by once in a while.' "
" 'Cause he's in the way," she said. "Anything I'd do, it'd be a hobby. We'd have to go to London for shows and someplace for family medical conventions, and I'd have to cook at Thanksgiving and Christmas for the kids and we'd have to keep up with our friends I couldn'tthink. I just need tothink."
"And what happens to Jack?"
"You know what I think?" She looked at him steadily. "I think if we got divorced in January, he'd be married again by December."
"You've got somebody in mind for the job?" Lucas asked.
"No. He doesn't fool around. But he needs a wife to hold him up, and if I moved out, there are plenty of women around town who'd sign up as candidates."
Lucas shook his head. "You know what? I bet he'd be devastated. I bet he wouldn't be married in five years. You'd be a little hard to get over."
She smiled at him, a sad smile. "Thanks."
"You gotta think about it," Lucas said. "Probably the most important thing you've thought about since you got married, or got pregnant."
"I didn't think about those things. I just did them," she said.
"So think about this."
She nodded. "Let's get out of here."
Outside, on the sidewalk, she said, "This whole conversation took a kind of unexpected turn. It was more like therapy than anything You've thought about this more than I expected you would have."
"I had a woman I wanted to marry, and didn't. She wouldn't. I'm still not over it," Lucas said. "When I look around City Hall, or the County Courthouse, the place is full of wounded people. I don't know what happened. I don't remember this happening to our parents' generation."
"It probably did, but they just never told us," Catrin said.
"Yeah." Lucas took a step back. "So think about it."
"One of the things I'm thinking about," she said, "is sleeping with you. But I've got to decide whether to do it before I walk, just to try it out, to see if I've got anything left or just go ahead and walk out, and sleep with you later."
Lucas was offended. "Like I don't have a say in it."
She regarded him for a minute, then shook her head. "Not much. You already want to sleep with me. If I really wanted to force it, I could press up against you and you'd get all kinds of Catholic guilt and everything, and you'd go raving up and down the house waving your arms, and then you'd do it."
"Jesus, I'm a piece of meat."
"Not that," she said. She reached out with an index finger and pushed against his chest. "You're just one of those guys who likes to sleep with women. You need the comfort. And you're not seeing anyone now. So I could do it, if I wanted to I just have to think."
He took another step back. "Well let me know."
Now she laughed, and for a moment she looked like she was nineteen again. "I will."
From his cab, Lucas used his cell phone to call his friend Bone; fifteen minutes later, Bone's secretary pushed him past a panel of waiting middle managers in the bankers outer office.
Bone was looking at two computer monitors at the same time. He turned away from them when Lucas came in and said, "Sometimes I feel like I've got so much radiation going through my skull, you could put a roll of film behind my head and get an X ray."
"How's your ankle?"
"Hurts. Should be okay by next week." They played pickup basketball twice a week. Bone had once been a suspect in a case Lucas had worked. Now he was not only a friend, but his banker connections could get Lucas useful financial information. "I got that stuff on your guy."
"Confidentially."
"Of course. But there wasn't much."
"Would you loan him money?"
Bone leaned back. "There are two things you look at before you loan a guy money: history and security. He never had much security, but, boy, his history is good."
"Too good?"
"No such thing as toogood," Bone said. "It just can't be toobad ."
"What if you depend on a hundred percent tenancy in your apartment buildings to meet your financing? And then make it? Is that too good?"
"He can't be doing that," Bone said. He rocked forward and shuffled through the papers, looked from one to another, punched a few numbers into one of his computers, and pushed a key. Then he said, "Jeez, that's a little tight, isn't it?"
"He's greasing it with dope money," Lucas said.
"Ah."
"What I need to knowthis'll never get to a second person, past mewould the guy who's making his loan know about this? About the dope?"
Bone spun his chair around until his back was to Lucas. He was looking at a walnut bookcase full of financial manuals, a few computer guides, the complete works of Joseph Conrad, and a tattered multivolume set of Proust'sRemembrance of Things Past. A copy of the Oxford Study Bible was jammed sideways on top of the Proust. After a minute, without turning back, Bone said, "He'd have to knowsomething ."
"But maybe not the dope?" Lucas asked of the chair.
Bone spun the chair around. He had a lean, wolflike face. He grinned, showing his teeth. "Maybe not, because there's another good possibility that bankers don't like to talk aboutthe other possibility is, he found a guy at the bank and either bribed him to okay the loan, or kicked back part of the loan itself."
"But whatever happened, the bank guy would have to know."
"I don't see how he could avoid it, if his IQ's over eighty," Bone said. Then: "I hope I haven't screwed anybody here."
"You might be reading about it," Lucas said. "This Rodriguez"
Bone was a smart guy. He knew Lucas wouldn't be on a routine errand. "Alie'e?"
"You might be reading about it," Lucas said again.
Del called to suggest they meet in St. Paul. Lucas checked on Marcy by phone, then got his car and headed across the river. Rodriguez's office was in the Windshuttle Building, hooked by Skyway to Galtier Plaza. Lucas dumped the Porsche in the Galtier parking garage and found Lane and Del loitering in the Skyway.
"He's down there now, talking to his secretary. See the Temps office? Look one window to the left, the guy in the pink shirt. That's him." Lane handed Lucas a pair of miniature Pentax binoculars, and Lucas looked down through the Skyway windows at the man in the pink shirt.
Rodriguez was ordinary. At six-two or six-three, he had thinning brown hair and a gut. He didn't look Latino; he looked like an everyday Minnesota white guy. He was intent on the secretary's computer screen. He said something to her, looked at a printer, looked back at the computer, tapped the screen, then turned back to the printer as a piece of paper rolled out.
As he turned back and forth, Lucas got a good view of his face. "You're sure this is the guy?"
"This is the guy," Lane said.
"He looks like a city councilman." Lucas turned to Del, "What'd the BCA say?"
"He had a fairly heavy juvenile record in Detroit, burglary mostly. They think he was running dope early on, just deliveries on his bike, then got his nose into it. He didn't do much in the way of sales Then he just disappeared. They never tried to find out where he went, they were just happy he was gone. They did some assessments on him when he was in juvenile care. They say he's smart, but as far as they can tell, he never went to school after the fifth grade."
"All right," Lucas said. He handed the glasses back to Lane and said, "You go home, relax, have a couple beers, visit your girlfriend, whatever. But I want you back on this guy tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, wherever he is, and you can plan to stay on him every day, all day, until we take him down."
"Good." Lane nodded. "Where're you guys going?"
Lucas looked at Del. "We better go talk to Rose Marie."
Rose Marie had just broken free of a press conference when Lucas and Del arrived. They could see her through the glass door of her outer office, waving her arms around, as the receptionist shook her head in sympathy. Lucas pushed through the door. Rose Marie nodded at them, turned back toward the receptionist to finish what she was saying, saw Del's "Lick Dick" T-shirt, did a worried double-take, lost her thought, and asked, '"What?"
"We gotta talk."
Inside her office, with the door closed, Lucas said, "I think we got the Alie'e killer. I'd say maybe eighty-five percent."
Rose Marie looked from Lucas to Del and back to Lucas and asked, "Who?"
"A guy named Rodriguez." They laid it out for her. At the end, she said, "So we know who it is, but we can't convict him."
"That's pretty much it," Lucas admitted. "When you make the leaps, you can convince yourself that he's the guy but a jury, I don't think so. One thing, he doesn't look like a dope dealer. He looks like a washing-machine salesman."
"What if he isn't the guy?"
"We put together a case. If we can put together a solid enough case to convince ourselves maybe we'll have a chance. Or maybe we'll stumble over something," Lucas said. "I mean, we convicted Rashid Al-Balah and he didn't even do it."
"So we brace the loan officer from the bank."
"As soon as we do it, he's gonna go out the back door, make a phone call, and Rodriguez will know we're on his ass," Del said.
"Good thought. We ought to have Rodriguez tapped," Lucas said. "If we can get him talking about it"
"Do we have enough for a tap?" Rose Marie asked.
"Probably," Lucas said. "We can get that going this afternoon. The best thing that could happen to the county attorneys office is to have something to distract from the Al-Balah story, when it breaks. If we can hang Rodriguez for Alie'e, Al-Balah moves to page nine."
"Al-Balah has already broken," Rose Marie said. "The county attorney's guys decided it'd be better to get out there first with the news, put some of their own spin on it."
"Still"
Rose Marie nodded. "I'll get them started on a tap."
Then Rose Marie laid out the situation with Tom Olson. He was out of the hospital, but was being tailed by relays of Homicide and Intelligence cops, who would stay with him twenty-four hours a day. Alie'e's funeral had been delayed until the elder Olsons' bodies were released, so they could all be buried togetherand that might be a while yet, because the situation in the Bloomington motel room was so complicated.
"If Olson's the guythe one who's going after everybodyelse, in revenge for his sisterwe think he might go after Jael Corbeau again, or the other woman, Catherine Kinsley."
"Or that Jax guy."
"Jax checked out," Rose Marie said. "He's gone to New York, but says he'll be back for the funeral. He's probably shopping for the right outfit to wear when he throws himself in her grave."
"So we're just watching?" Lucas asked.
"No. We've had these family briefings every day, and we're going to continue them. In fact, Olson's coming here in"she looked at her watch"about twenty-five minutes. We're going to try to point him at Kinsley. We'll talk a little about Alie'e's relationship with her. Kinsley and her husband are going up north to their cabin, which is way the hell out in the woods. You can't even find them with a map. We'll have a team at her house, waiting, if Olson goes that way."
"How about Jael?" Lucas asked.
"We think he's less likely to try her, because he tried once, and she ran him off," Rose Marie said. "But we'll have a team there, too. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop by and talk to her. She's scared, and she'd like to have you around."
"All right," Lucas said. "And listen, I know Angela Harris is a smart shrink, but I saw Olson's face when he came running across the grass to tell us about his folks. And man, I don't know about this multiple-personality stuff, but that was real. That was so strong that if his personalities were gonna dissolve, or whatever they do, that would have happened right then. I mean I've never seen anything like it. Ever."
"We're keeping that in mind, of course," Rose Marie said. "But its what we've got, right now."
"So we're set?" Del asked, stepping toward the door.
"If everything went exactly rightexactly rightwe could have both these guys in twenty-four hours," Rose Marie said. "If the bank guy calls Rodriguez, if Olson goes for Kinsley"
"There's gotta be at least one time in life when everything works," Del said. "One time."
"Bullshit," Lucas said. Out in the hall, when they were away from Rose Marie, he added, "She says they're keeping in mind that it might be somebody else, but they're not. They just put all their chips on Olson."
"And we put all of ours on Rodriguez," Del said.
"Yeah, but there's a major difference," Lucas said.
"What's that?"
"We're right. They might not be."