Easy Prey

said.
    Del pushed Outer down on an overstuffed chair, and Lucas sat on the box spring.
    “I’m gonna make you an offer. I can’t make it after you talk to an attorney, I can only make it before. We can fix it so you take a minimum plea on the dope and the gun—three years. That’s what we can do.”
    “Attorney.”
    “Or we can call the Illinois cops, tell them where your apartment is, tell them we’ve busted you as a big-time dealer.” He looked at the Ziploc bags, and said to Del, “I think we can call that big-time when we talk to Evanston.”
    “I think so,” Del said. “Definitely big-time.”
    He looked back at Outer. “We can ask them to search your apartment. If there’s dope there, if there’s a gun there . . .” Lucas spread his arms and shrugged. “Well, that’s another felony. And how many felonies you got in Illinois, Larry? Two? Aw, that’s terrible. Illinois is a three-strike state, right? What a shame.” He leaned forward, the mean smile crossing his face. “You know how long forever is? It’s a long fucking time, Larry.”
    “Jesus . . .”
    “We can’t offer you this deal after you talk to an attorney, because your attorney might call a friend of yours in Illinois, and the apartment might get cleaned,” Del said. “If we don’t make a deal right now, we’re gonna have to make the call. And get you an attorney, of course.”
    Outer put his head down. “You’re fucks.”
    “Well, you know, Larry, that comes with our job sometimes,” Del said. “That’s why we sometimes offer deals to our favorite citizens. To make ourselves feel better.”
    “What do I gotta do?”
    “We’ve got two names. We know you know the guys, because we’ve seen you with them. We want a statement.”
    “Who?”
    “James Bee,” Del said. “And Curtis Logan.”
    “Is that it?” Outer said. “I flip on those guys, and I walk?”
    “Well, you walk out to Stillwater for a couple,” Lucas said. “But you can do a couple standing on your head. And we won’t call Evanston. Until later.”
    Outer seemed to brighten. “Well, shit, if that’s all—I can do that,” Outer said.
    Lucas and Del looked at each other, then Del looked at Outer and said, “I knew we could be friends.”
    “Friends—but I want something on paper before I talk,” Outer said.
     
 
THEY CALLED A squad, and had Outer transported to the jail with instructions that he didn’t get a phone call without Lucas being told. “You call, I call Evanston,” Lucas said. “I bet we can get the Evanston cops there before you can get it cleaned out.”
    Del went over to the county attorney’s office to find somebody who could help draw up the deal, and somebody else who could get search warrants for James Bee and Curtis Logan. Lucas walked up the stairs, heading for his office, but got hooked by a secretary: “They’re gonna show film from St. Paul. They’re bringing somebody in.”
    “What?”
    “It’s on TV,” she said.
    Homicide had a TV, and Lucas stopped there; a half-dozen cops were gathered around the tube. The St. Paul chief was saying, “No, no, no, we just wanted to talk to him. We don’t have any indication that he had anything to do with the murder of Mr. Plain. . . .”
    “Who is it?” Lucas asked.
    “Brought in some vending machine guy,” one of the cops said. And as he said it, with the chief rambling on in the background, a news clip came up, two St. Paul cops escorting a man in blue coveralls into the front of the police station. He was brown-haired, slat-faced, rawboned.
    “Not porky,” Lucas said. “He was supposed to be porky.”
    At his office, he had a Call me message from Sherrill, and a note from Lane saying that the Olson family-and-friends genealogy was complete, and he’d put it on a computer disk with Lucas’s name on it, in the chief’s secretary’s out basket.
    He dialed Sherrill. “I just kicked open a motel door and arrested a dealer,” he said. “What are you doing?”
    “We just bought a casket,” Sherrill said. “I’m creeped out. You know the last time I was in here--”
    “Yeah. Don’t think about it.” The last time she’d been at the funeral home, she’d been buying a casket for her husband. “How’s Corbeau?”
    “She’s in the can. By herself—I checked. I think you made an impression on her this morning, and it wasn’t fatherly,” Sherrill said. “My personal feeling is that she’s too young for you.”
    “She can’t be any younger