Easy Prey

the county jail.
    They still had the outstanding warrant for the second house, but Del shook his head: “Everything’s too heavy right how,” he said. “If we need it, let’s do it tomorrow. Let’s go talk to Bee—maybe he’ll give us what we need.”
    “Let’s stop at the hospital first.”
    “Yeah, well—I assumed that,” Del said.
     
 
THEY WEREN’T ALLOWED to look into the operating room, and Sherrill was still on the table.
    “Jesus, how long’s it been?” Lucas asked Rose Marie.
    Rose Marie had taken an empty hospital room, and was working two separate patient telephones. She looked at her watch. “Four hours.”
    “How much more can they have to do?”
    “I don’t know what they’ve done, Lucas. Look . . . go away. Go do something.”
    “Like what?” he asked.
    “I don’t care, but this isn’t good for you.” She looked at Del. “You either.”
    Del said, “So let’s go talk to Bee.”
     
 
BEE WAS WITH his lawyer. Lucas knocked on the door, poked his head in. “Wanted you to know . . . we’re looking for some information and we might be able to talk.”
    “I don’t think so,” the lawyer said. “Your search warrant is a piece of toilet paper.”
    “Au contraire,” Del said. “That thing is a piece of gold. Your client here is going straight to jail, and he won’t be passing Go.”
    Bee looked troubled. He said, “I don’t think I’ve exactly got a problem. For one thing, it wasn’t my cocaine, it was Connie’s. But say I wanted to help Connie . . . what would you need to know?”
    “We’re trying to find out who was running Sandy Lansing, the woman killed with Alie’e Maison. She was dealing, but she was retail. We’re looking for the guy behind her.”
    Bee shrugged. “Let me talk to Ralph here. I don’t know if I could help you even if I wanted to. But let me talk to Ralph.”
    “Talk to Ralph,” Lucas said. And to Ralph: “I understand you’ve been shootin’ beaver again.”
    Ralph grinned and said, “Shhh,” and Bee said, “What?” Ralph said, “I got a little beaver problem up at my cabin.”
    “Larry Connell said about once an hour he’d hear a high-powered rifle,” Lucas said.
    “Deer season’s coming up,” the lawyer said. “I need the practice. And those fuckin’ beaver, if they block up that creek, it’s gonna flood my whole property. Goddamn rodents. I hate them almost as much as I hate the DNR.”
    “What beaver?” Bee asked.
    “Talk to you later,” Lucas said.
    “You know what you dumb shits did?” Bee said. “You took the one guy who’d know about this for sure—you took and put him in prison. He hates your ass, and he ain’t never gonna talk to you.”
    Del said, “What?” and he and Lucas looked at each other, then simultaneously said, “Rashid Al-Balah.”
     
 
OUTSIDE, LUCAS SAID, “We gotta nail down that poker game. If Trick’s gonna be anywhere, that’d be it.”
    “Gimme two hours,” Del said. “You going back to the hospital?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Turn on your cell phone.”
    “Okay.”
    “No. I wanna see you do it,” Del said.
    Lucas took out the cell phone and turned it on. Del took out his, punched a speed-dial code, and Lucas’s phone buzzed. “Satisfied?”
    “Keep it on,” Del said. “I don’t want to be kicking down the door of a high-stakes game by myself.”
     
 
LUCAS WALKED THROUGH the tunnel to the government center and took an elevator up to the county attorney’s office. Randall Towson was in conference. Lucas got him out, into a hallway.
    “What’s going on?” Towson asked. He was holding a printout of what looked like a financial spreadsheet.
    “Have you talked to Al-Balah’s attorney about Del bumping into Trick Bentoin?”
    “Not yet, but I can’t put it off much longer,” Towson said.
    “Could you call him now?” Lucas asked. “And tell him that we’ve lost Trick, and can’t do anything yet, but we’re looking. And that we might want to talk to Al-Balah tomorrow.”
    “Makes us look retarded,” Towson said. “He’ll be calling the papers two minutes after he hangs up.”
    “We really need to talk to Al-Balah,” Lucas said. “It’s the Maison case.”
    He gave Towson a quick explanation, and Towson said finally, “All right. I gotta call him anyway. I’ll do it right now. You sure you’ll find Bentoin?”
    “No. But Del’s heard that it’s a big game, and that normally would be a magnet for the guy. Even if he’s not there, somebody