Easy Prey

nobody’s looking for Trick,” Lucas said.
    “Don’t worry about Trick.”
    “We’ve got to get Al-Balah out. There’s gonna be a lawsuit, and we’ve got to at least keep our heads up on that,” Lucas said.
    “Sure. If you happen to stumble over Trick, that’s fine. But the priority has got to be Alie’e, and keeping people alive. This thing in St. Paul is almost like a good break. We get some time to work without everybody breathing down our necks.”
    “They’ll all be back here tomorrow morning.”
    “That’s twenty-four hours.”
    BACK IN HIS own office, Lucas called Sherrill on her cell phone. She’d heard about Plain, and Lucas told her to get with Jael Corbeau: “A bodyguard job?” she complained. “Why can’t you pull somebody in?”
    “Look, it’s a high-danger point right now. We don’t have anybody to chase yet, but somebody killed Plain and somebody may be stalking Jael. I want you with her. I don’t want you looking like a cop. I want you to girl around with Corbeau a little. Her brother’s dead, but if you could get her out in the open, making arrangements for the funeral . . .”
    “You mean, like bait ?” Sherrill asked.
    “Not a word I’d choose,” Lucas said.
    “Hmm.” She was thinking about it. “That doesn’t sound so bad, when you put it that way. Maybe pull this guy right in.”
    “Yeah. So get over there. She’s expecting you.” When he got off, he walked down to Homicide, found Frank Lester, and told him that the chief wanted somebody with Kinsley. “Might as well,” Lester said, “since nobody’s getting dog shit.”
    “Nothing at all?”
    “Nothing.”
     
 
LUCAS CALLED DEL. “I called your office a couple of times,” Del said. “I think I’m gonna need a couple of search warrants.”
    “What happened?”
    “The other guy, Curtis Logan, is on vacation somewhere—maybe Vegas. So I hung around James Bee last night, staying out of sight, and at one point he hooked up with Larry Outer. You remember Outer?”
    “Vaguely. Wasn’t he involved with that Chicago bunch?”
    “Yeah. I thought he’d gone away, but I followed Bee down to this pie place on Grand Avenue, and who does he hook up with, but Outer. After a while, they go out to Outer’s car, and they talk for a couple of minutes, and then Bee goes back to his own car. Outer’s car has Illinois tags, which I got, and I tracked those, and they gave me an apartment in Evanston. I’m willing to bet that Outer is dealing with Bee, and if we stop him on some bullshit, we’re gonna find some coke in his car. And if we find some coke in his car, even a little bit, then we can probably get a search warrant for his apartment, and if they find anything there, that’d be three felonies in Illinois. And Illinois is a three-strike state.”
    “You’re such a clever fuck.”
    “Not only that—when I pulled Outer’s sheet outa the NCIC, there’s a misdemeanor warrant on him for skipping out on child support in Cleveland. He ditched some chick and her kid.”
    “A vicious criminal. A mad dog.”
    “No doubt. So we can take down Outer without having to go through any perjury bullshit on a search warrant. When we get him, we’ve got him in an armlock, unless he’s willing to have somebody kick his door in Illinois. So he gives us Bee, and we use that to get a warrant, and we hit Bee’s apartment and maybe his office, and get a list. And maybe that gets us back to Alie’e’s.” He rubbed his eyes. “Convoluted as hell, but it’s what we got.”
    “And for Logan, we have to wait until he gets back from Vegas.”
    “Unless Outer can give us him along with Bee.”
    “So it all hangs on Outer,” Lucas said.
    “Yup.”
    “You have any idea where he is now?”
    “In a motel in Plymouth. I’m standing outside a McDonald’s looking at his car, freezing my ass off.”
    “You been there all night?”
    “We’ve been everywhere all night—we got here about ten minutes ago. Which brings me to the question: What are you doing up at this time of day?”
    “Amnon Plain,” Lucas said.
    “Uh-oh. What’d he do?”
    “You haven’t heard the radio? He was shot to death last night.”
    “No shit?”
    “Over in St. Paul. He’s seriously dead.”
    After a moment of silence, Del said, “Goddamnit.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Though it does add a certain frisson to the case.”
    “A what?”
    “Frisson. It’s a French word. So get me some guys over here--”
    “There’s nobody to get,”