Easy Prey

jewelry. Larry Martin checked the workout club and found out that they use these magnetic cards to check you in. She went Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and all she did was a forty-five minute class designed to keep your butt looking good. So she wasn’t even interested in working out. Wasn’t interested in music, not interested in TV, had about six books.”
    “And no pictures.”
    “Not many,” Lester said.
    “Did you look at the porn?”
    “No, but Larry did. She wasn’t in it. Other than that, it was just standard jerk-off stuff out of California. Hot tubs and swimming pools and blow jobs.”
    “Huh. Ever wonder why we live in Minnesota?”
    “So we don’t have to put up with that scum,” Lester said.
    “What a poop,” Lucas said. He stood up and stretched.
    “Scratching for anything, huh?”
    “At this point . . .”
    JUST AFTER DARK, with rush hour building outside the door, Lucas started thinking about dinner; then took a call from the cop sent to watch Rodriguez.
    “This is really exciting stuff,” the cop said. “Wish I was plainclothes and got to stand in Skyways all the time.”
    “You calling to thank me, or what?”
    “Some dude pulled into Rodriguez’s office, he’s got a briefcase bigger than my dick, and they sat down and started looking at paper. This dude is pushing all kinds of paper across the desk. I can’t tell you anything about it, because all I can see is their shirtsleeves. So, after about an hour, the guy puts all the paper back in the briefcase and comes out, and Rodriguez pulls up his computer and I figure he isn’t going anyplace, and maybe I ought to check this other dude . . .”
    “And you went after the second guy and Rodriguez skipped on you,” Lucas finished.
    “Fuck no. I’m looking at him right now. Rodriguez, I mean. Anyway, I followed the other guy into the parking ramp and he gets into a car that’s got magnetic signs on the doors. Coffey Realty. I got the phone number off the door and the tag number off the car, and then I ran back to make sure Rodriguez wasn’t going away. . . . Anyway, Rodriguez is still here, and he was dealing heavy with a guy from a real estate company.”
    “All right. You done good. I owe you a donut or something.”
    “ Two donuts. With them little sprinkles. You want these numbers?”
    Lucas looked up the tag number for the dealer’s car, and got a name and an address. When he called Coffey Realty and asked for Kirk Smalley, Smalley was in, and working. “I need to talk to you,” Lucas said after identifying himself. “I can be there before five o’clock.”
    Coffey Realty was located on University Avenue just down from the state capitol, a block from the Atheneum bank. As he parked his car in the gathering darkness, Lucas made a mental note to check on connections between the real estate company and the bank, then walked up and pulled on the real estate company’s door. Locked. There was a light inside, and he knocked. A moment later, a balding man with rolled-up shirtsleeves came to the door, peered at Lucas, then opened it.
    “Officer Davenport?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Come on in. I’m Kirk Smalley.” Smalley locked the door behind them and led Lucas back to an interior office.
    “Big place,” Lucas said as they walked back.
    “We’re a pretty good-sized company,” Smalley said. “We specialize in commercial real estate, so we don’t do a lot of mass advertising. But we do pretty well.” He dropped into a swivel chair behind his desk, waved Lucas at a visitor’s chair, and asked, “What can I do for you?”
    “Are you handling a real estate deal for Richard Rodriguez?”
    Smalley swung back and forth in his chair, thinking about the question, and then said, “Can you tell me why you want to know?”
    “I can tell you some things . . . if you’re handling a real estate deal.”
    “Is this confidential?”
    “If we need your official testimony, we’ll subpoena you—you’d have no choice about talking, if you see what I mean.”
    “What, Richard Rodriguez is in the Mafia?” Smalley grinned at Lucas.
    “It’s serious,” Lucas said.
    Now Smalley sat forward. “You’ve got to keep it confidential, unless you subpoena me.”
    “Sure.” That didn’t sound like enough. “We will,” Lucas added.
    Smalley shrugged. “He called me today, Richard did, and asked me how hard it would be to sell off his real estate holdings. He wanted to know how long, and how much. I told him how much depends