Buried Prey

don’t know about. Why he’d think that? He doesn’t seem like a guy who’d talk to bums.”
    “Fell used to go to the massage place across the street . . . and the girls sometimes come in here . . .”
    “They do not solicit in here,” Katz said. “This is a neighborhood place. They know better.”
    “But they come in,” Lucas said. “Do they hang with Fell? Do they come in for him?”
    “Not especially. But I’ll tell you what, a guy that goes to a hooker, on a regular basis, isn’t quite right,” Katz said. “You know what I mean?”
    Lucas nodded. “I think so.”
    “I mean, if you’re really ugly, or you’re handicapped, and can’t get a regular woman, then, maybe. You gotta let off steam,” Katz said. “But John, there’s nothing physically wrong with him, not that you can see, anyway. Okay, he’s a little fat, but a lot of guys are fat now. But if there’s something wrong with him, it’s up here.” Katz tapped his temple.
    “You say he’s in around six or seven?”
    “Most days,” Katz said. “You plan to come back?”
    “I’d like to talk to him,” Lucas said. “We’re pushing every button we got, and he’s one of them.”
    “You think you’ll get those kids back?” Katz asked.
    Lucas said, “Most of the experienced guys don’t think so. I’m too new and dumb to give up.”

    LUCAS WENT BACK out to the street and sat in his Jeep. The sun was still high, and it was hot, and he couldn’t think of what to do. He finally headed home, cranked up the air conditioner, and fell on his bed, certain that he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
    He didn’t for half an hour: his mind kept moving, looking for any crack that he could get ahold of, anything he could do. There wasn’t much: as long as he was pulling on the Scrape thread, he had a line to work along. But that thread ran out, and he was deadended on Fell. There had to be some other way to get at Fell, but he could feel his own ignorance there. He knew that if he’d only been working longer, he would have thought of something.
    Instead, he felt marinated in ignorance.
     
     
    THE PHONE SURPRISED HIM: caught him asleep, and for quite a while, he thought. He popped up on his hands, in a half-push-up, disoriented, in the dark, his shirt twisted around his neck.
    He found the phone, and Sloan was on the other end of the line: “Thought you might be interested. Nine-one-one got a tip that says ol’ Scrape was seen throwing a box of stuff in a dumpster behind Tom’s Pizza on Lyndale, yesterday about dark. You want to do some diving?”
    “Aw, man, no,” Lucas said. He’d gone dumpster-diving a few times on patrol. “I mean, I’d like to be there. . . .”
    “Daniel’s looking for one of us to go in,” Sloan said. “You know, one of his guys. Junior guy usually does it.”
    “Who’s junior if I don’t do it?” Lucas asked.
    “That’d be me,” Sloan said.
    Lucas smiled into the phone. “What’s it worth to you?”
    “C’mon, man. I’m in good clothes, I don’t have time to change,” Sloan said. “You’re at home, you could just throw on some old shit.”
    “All right, all right,” Lucas said. “I hope it’s not for nothing.”
    “Bring a flashlight,” Sloan said. “Listen, weren’t you there last night when that soldier guy found the blouse?”
    “Yeah, that was us.”
    “Well, Tom’s is about two blocks up that alley. I think this could be something.”
    “Twenty minutes,” Lucas said. “I gotta stop at Walgreens and get some Vicks.”
    He changed into an old pair of jeans and high-topped hiking boots, a T-shirt with terminally stained underarms, and a year-old canvas fishing shirt, still new enough to be stiff.
    His biggest fear wasn’t the filth of a dumpster; it was AIDS. The disease was exploding in the Cities, and the papers said that a major component in its spread, besides gay sex, was blood-toblood contact with needles used by junkies.
    And needles wound up in dumpsters.
    Five minutes after Sloan’s call, he was back in his Jeep. He made a quick stop at a Walgreens, picked up the thickest pair of yellowplastic kitchen gloves they had, and a jar of Vicks VapoRub.
     
     
    TOM’S PIZZA WAS a failing storefront pizza joint distinguished by its low prices and juicy bluebottle flies. The flies looked a little too much like Tom’s pizza ingredients for the high-priced trade, though some argued that they added a certain je ne sais quoi to the cheese-and-mushroom special.
    Lucas