Easy Prey

almost got up this time, and the guard stepped away from the wall: “Spring? Fuckin’ spring?”
    Lucas shrugged. “It’s this goddamn Alie’e thing. We can’t catch a break. We’re working on it.”
    “Richie Rodriguez,” Al-Balah said. His lawyer said, “Stop!” but Al-Balah continued. “The bitch was run by Richie Rodriguez, who gots a place in Woodbury. He gotta a whole bunch of apartment buildings or some shit.”
    Del looked at Lucas and said, “There’s a Richard Rodriguez on the party list.”
    “That’s him. Richard ,” Al-Balah said. “You call him ‘Dick’ if you want to piss him off.”
    “Goddamn it,” Laziard said.
    Lucas looked at Al-Balah and said, “Thanks. We’ll push the Trick Bentoin thing. We owe you.”
    “You owe me, and you gotta get me outa here. I’m fuckin’ innocent. ” Al-Balah was pleading now.
    “Yeah, well . . . more or less,” Lucas said. He took a step toward the outer door, following Del.
    Laziard asked, “Will I hear from you this afternoon?”
    Before Lucas could answer, Del, who’d opened the door, said, “Whoa!” He reached out and, a second later, pulled Trick Bentoin into the room by his shirtsleeve.
    “Hi, guys,” Bentoin said, shining like the fuckin’ sun.
    “You pricks,” Laziard said.
    Al-Balah was stunned, but after gaping at Bentoin for a second, he started to laugh, and a minute later, was laughing so hard that he had to lean on his attorney for support. So hard that Lucas, Del, Laziard, and Bentoin started to laugh, and finally, even the guard.
     
 
ON THE WAY back to town, Del’s phone rang. He answered, listened for a second, and said, “Yeah, he’s right here. He just hasn’t turned his fuckin’ phone on.” He handed the phone to Lucas. “It’s Frank.”
    Lester was calling with three pieces of news. “We’re rolling on this multiple-personality idea. The Olsons were murdered, dude. The shrink called it. Mrs. Olson’s head was on top of some blood spray from her old man, and from the way the spray hit her face, she was looking toward him when she was shot. When her body was recovered, she was looking straight up toward the ceiling.”
    “So he was killed first,” Lucas said.
    “Absolutely. But the gun was next to him.”
    “All right,” Lucas said. “What happened to that Bloom guy we were checking out?”
    “Black checked him, and isn’t getting anyplace. The guy seems really straight.”
    “We got a better name,” Lucas said. “A Richard Rodriguez. He’s on the list.”
    “How good?”
    “Very good. Have you seen Lane around there? He should be back from Fargo.”
    “Yeah. He’s here,” Lester said.
    “Get him on the Rodriguez guy. Full bio. We’ll be back in half an hour.”
    “See you then.”
    “How’s Marcy?” Lucas asked.
    “Same, I guess. I checked this morning when I came in, and nobody’s said anything else.”
    “Half hour,” Lucas said.
     
 
THINGS WERE BEGINNING to move, like watching the ice go off the river in spring. Nothing happening, nothing happening, and then boom: breakup.
    When they got back, they walked Trick over to the county attorney’s office, left him, and headed back to City Hall. Lane was waiting outside Lucas’s office with a wad of paper in his hand. He saw them coming, and walked down the hall waving the paper.
    “He’s our guy. He’s a dealer, anyway. Moved here from Detroit eleven years ago, got busted a couple of times for vagrancy. Now he owns a bunch of small apartment buildings here and in St. Paul and out in Washington County, through a real-estate investment company in Miami.” Lane was talking at a hundred miles and hour, and they were swirling around each other in the hall, looking at pieces of paper. “He lists himself as an apartment manager on his state tax returns. I looked at the returns going all the way back, and he showed up nine years ago at twenty-two thousand, and now he’s up to ninety, but he never lists his ownership anywhere. He doesn’t have to.”
    “Goddamnit, this looks good,” Lucas said.
    Del nodded. “Hiding the money. But I wonder why he’s still selling dope if he’s got the apartments?”
    “He pyramided them, I think,” Lane said. “He can’t stop yet. Maybe he’s got a pal at the bank who knows he has another income,’cause it looks like he bought the first apartment with a cash down payment—and nobody asked any questions—then used the equity in that one to finance the next one, paid on that a