Easy Prey

this.”
    “What?”
    “Come on.”
    Whatever it was, was good, Lucas thought. The cop was too cheerful for it to be anything else.
    “Got some stuff upstairs, Chief,” one of the armored team members said as Lucas ducked inside the house. The house was old, with ceilings that felt an inch too low, floors that creaked underfoot, and rooms that seemed a foot short in both lateral dimensions. The wallpaper on the walls was loose, with warps and water damage near the floor. A couple of rag rugs in once-bright, now dirt-muted, colors made ovals in front of a big-screen television. The place smelled of tacos—hamburger and onions. Most of the cops were crowded into the dining room. Lucas stepped that way, and saw a large black man in olive-green underwear, a dazed expression on his face, handcuffed on an open studio bed. Del was squatting next to him, talking.
    “Where’s Mary Lou?” Lucas asked.
    “She went out a few minutes ago, about the time we were starting over here,” Lapstrake said. “She got on a downtown bus, and we let her go.”
    “Upstairs,” said the armored cop, a little impatient.
    Upstairs, in the single bedroom, what looked like a full cord of marijuana bricks were stacked on a plastic sheet in the middle of the room.
    “All right,” said Lapstrake. “Now we’re talking.”
    Lucas picked up one of the bricks, sniffed it, dropped it. A small upstairs window was open, two thin curtains fluttering in a breath of breeze; outside, through the screen, he could see a little boy playing in a tractor-tire sandbox. Ten yards away, a little girl, a few years older than the boy, stood looking diagonally across the yard at what must have been the cops in the street. Her arms and legs were rigid with attention and possibly fear or anger. He was struck by the similarity of the view from the window and a camera shot in a World War II movie he’d seen on television the week before. But then the men in black combat gear, with the helmets and guns, rousting people from their houses, had been Nazis.
    Just a movie.
     
 
HE TURNED BACK to Lapstrake. “I’m gonna tell the TV people to hang around. When you get this documented, let them in, let them get some shots of you guys carrying the stuff out,” Lucas said. “And flash the cocaine, too.”
    “Not me,” Lapstrake said.
    “So get a front guy. Get Jones down here from dope, he’s good at this shit,” Lucas said.
    Downstairs again, Del eased over and said, “I’m outa here—I’ll get a ride with one of the squads. We got maybe a kilo and a half of powder cocaine and a bottle of heroin, plus that weed. No crack.”
    “What do you think about Shaw?”
    “George is history,” Del said.
    “Is there any possibility that any of this shit really could have gotten to Alie’e?”
    “He’s not really in that high end of the trade,” Del said. “But who knows? I’ll talk to him again downtown.”
     
 
DEL AND LAPSTRAKE stayed out of sight while the entry team took George Shaw out to a car and put him inside, and when the cameras started following the head-down figure of Shaw, now dressed in dark slacks and tennis shoes, Del went out the back. Lucas followed the Shaw parade. As soon as the police car was moving, one of the TV reporters shouted his name, and he walked toward them. The reporters were accompanied by three cameramen, who refocused from the car to Lucas.
    “Chief Davenport, we understand this raid was a direct reaction to the murder of Alie’e Maison this morning. Is that right?”
    Lucas shook his head. “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. I can tell you that we’ve found a substantial quantity of illegal drugs.”
    “What drugs?”
    “Both cocaine and heroin and a very large amount of marijuana,” Lucas said, looking into the cameras. “The marijuana looks like a stack of firewood.”
    “We understand that cocaine and heroin may have been involved in Maison’s death.”
    “I have heard that, but my source probably wasn’t any better than yours,” Lucas said mildly.
    “Weren’t you at the death scene early this morning?”
    “Yes, I was.” Reluctantly.
    “And now you’re here investigating the exact same drugs that were found.”
    “Look,” Lucas said, interrupting, “I don’t want to talk about the Maison investigation. Chief Roux is taking direct charge of that investigation, and all comment has to come through her.”
    “But we understand that you are coordinating--”
    “I really can’t