Chosen Prey

they had some decent loads, in about anything you wanted. And they had a grocery area and a bait operation in the back room. This chick up on the bar, dancing . . . I bet she went 180, and she was not a tall girl. Had bruises all over her, like she fell down a lot.”
    “Different culture,” Marshall said. “We like something you can get ahold of.”
    “You not only could get a hold on this one, you could hardly avoid her,” Lucas said.
    “Bruises like she was getting beat up?” Del asked.
    “Naw. Like she might start drinking martinis at breakfast,” Lucas said. “She was definitely a . . . bruised peach. She could dance, though.”
    “Why’d you have to go through that whole thing about .243s to tell us a nudie-bar story?” Del asked.
    Lucas shook his head. “The idea of hanging out in a combination bait shop–nudie bar looking at fat women dance at midnight before the deer opener . . . I don’t know. It does feel different than what we got here.”
     
    T HE B OLO L OUNGE was open but had no customers. A woman in a robe and plastic flip-flops was sitting on the edge of a table-sized circular stage when they came in, reading a throwaway real estate magazine. She looked them over, and Lucas shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Where’s Frank Stans?”
    She didn’t answer, but she looked down toward the bar; a black man stood at the far end, looking down at the bartop. Frank Stans was older, in his sixties, Lucas thought, bald with a fringe of white hair. He did not look like anybody’s grandpa—he looked like he’d once lifted a lot of weight, and from time to time some of it had fallen on his face. He was reading a Japanese manga comic book and drinking what looked like a Pepto-Bismol cocktail through a straw.
    “Mr. Stans?” Lucas asked.
    Stans looked up. “Who wants to know?”
    “Minneapolis police.” Lucas showed him his ID, and as Marshall and Del moved up beside him, pulled the photos of the Aronson jewelry out of his pocket. “We’re told that you sold this ring and necklace to Bob Brown six months ago. We’re wondering where you got it.”
    Lucas dropped the pictures on the bar, and Stans looked down at them without touching the photographs. “Don’t remember,” he grunted. “I sold things to Brown once or twice, but I don’t remember this.”
    “It’d be really good if you tried hard,” Del said. “The stuff was taken off a girl who was murdered and buried out in the countryside.”
    “We’re not looking at you as an accomplice,” Lucas said, trying to take the edge off.
    “Not yet,” said Marshall, putting the edge back on.
    Lucas glanced at him—Marshall’s voice sounded like chipped glass—then looked back at Stans and said, “So look at them again. Because it would be a rainy day in your life if you don’t remember, and we find out later that you were bullshitting us.”
    Stans and Marshall had locked eyes, and neither was backing off. Del said, “This is particularly important to the deputy here, ’cause some of his family was killed by the guy who took this jewelry.”
    “You say Deputy Dog?” Stans asked, cutting his eyes over to Del.
    “I . . .” Del started.
    Marshall jumped in, talking to Del while he still looked at Stans. “He don’t bother me. I deal with trash all the time. Sooner or later, something always happens to them.”
    “That a threat?” Stans asked, not quite looking at Marshall.
    “No, I don’t threaten anybody. I guess the good Lord just don’t like accomplices. He winds up catching them behind the bar and taking them off.”
    Stans now looked at Lucas. “Listen to this shit. Listen to this . . .”
    Lucas put up a finger, silencing Stans, then said to Marshall, “Shut up.”
    Marshall nodded. Lucas said to Stans, “So taking a second look, see if you remember better.”
    Stans had locked eyes with Marshall again, and this time, apparently saw something he didn’t like. He looked back down at the pictures and said, “Yeah, I got it off some white boy. Never saw him before. Said somebody downtown put him on me, told him that I bought estate jewelry.”
    “What’d he look like?” Lucas asked.
    Stans shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a white boy. White face, skinny, maybe six feet or a little more or less, but about that. Brown hair. Maybe blond hair. No beard or anything.”
    “Nervous?”
    “No.” He looked at Marshall again, and then his eyes flicked away. “Doper. He was running