Easy Prey

We’ve got Rodriguez at the party. We’ve got a guy—Derrick Deal—who knew Lansing pretty well, and thought she might be selling a little dope; and he was a guy who would do a little blackmail if it looked profitable. He almost certainly knew who her boss was, because a day after I talked to him, he was murdered in a way that was at least reminiscent of the way Alie’e and Lansing were killed: no passion, just brutal efficiency.”
    “I don’t see how you tie Deal to Rodriguez,” Rose Marie said.
    “I don’t, directly. What I’m saying is, Deal didn’t know Alie’e. So if he was going to blackmail somebody for murder, it had to be somebody tied to Lansing. The only person at that party tied to Lansing, as far as we know, was Rodriguez.”
    Long looked at Towson. “We’d need some kind of color chart, or maybe a PowerPoint presentation, to sell that to a jury.”
    Towson shook his head. “We’re not at a jury yet. We need more.”
    “We’re just starting on the guy,” Del said.
    Long leaned into the discussion. “I got all the paper from Atheneum. Spooner’s boss was looking over my shoulder, and you know what? If we push the guy, he’ll tell us the loans shouldn’t have been made. The goddamn things are dirty. Rodriguez was paying him off.”
    “Can we crack him?” Towson asked.
    “I don’t know. He’s sort of a nebbish, but he’s scared, and if he keeps his mouth shut . . . I mean, he’s got a lawyer, and if he claims that the loans were on the up-and-up and keeps going back to this minority business, and if Rodriguez doesn’t talk, there’s not much we can get him on.”
    “We’ll get some paper going on him,” Lucas said. “If he’s been paid off by Rodriguez, he might have an income-tax problem.”
    Towson said to Long, “Talk to the IRS.”
     
 
LESTER SUMMARIZED THE case against Tom Olson. “He had motive, he had opportunity, he had access to a car that we now know for sure was used in the Marcy Sherrill shooting--”
    “How do you know that?” Long asked.
    “We took the slug out of the car door. It didn’t penetrate the passenger compartment, it wound up inside a plastic handle inside the door. It came from Marcy’s revolver.”
    Long nodded. “Okay.”
    “But you haven’t found the .44 that was used on Marcy,” Lucas said.
    “No.”
    “That’s a problem,” Del said.
    “Yup. Especially since he’s been here, and not back in Fargo, ever since the shooting. We went through his motel room, and his car, after his parents were killed. No gun. The gun that was used to kill his parents belonged to his father: It was his father’s car gun.”
    “Where’d you get that?” Lucas asked.
    “Olson told us. His father kept it under the front-seat cushion. We ran the serial numbers, traced it to a gun store up in Burnt River. Lynn Olson bought it six years ago.”
    “You think he did his parents?” Towson asked.
    “We’ve got this whole theory. . . .” Lester explained the multiple-personality concept, and explained the trap they’d set for Olson.
    “The trap better work,” Towson said, “Because the multiple-personality theory sounds like bullshit.”
     
 
A SECRETARY STUCK her head in and said, “Lucas, you’ve got a call from the White House.”
    The group all looked at him, and Lucas said, “What?”
    “The guy said he’s with the White House. He didn’t sound like he was joking.”
    “You better take it,” Rose Marie said.
    Lucas took it on the secretary’s desk. Mallard said, “I bet that impressed everybody. The switchboard lady told me you were in a meeting in the chief’s office.”
    “It certainly impressed the shit out of me,” Lucas said. “What’s happening?”
    “Your boy Rodriguez started selling out his accounts Monday morning. It’ll be a couple of days before he gets the checks, but he’s got a quarter million in the mail.”
    “Goddamn,” Lucas said.
    “I’ve only got one thing from Miami. Rodriguez set up the Miami company nine years ago. The attorney’s name is Haynes, and as far as the guys in the Miami office know, he’s straight—small time, private office, business-oriented guy. Does real estate, that kind of stuff.”
    “Mallard, you’re a good egg,” Lucas said.
    “Ho ho, very funny,” Mallard said. “By the way, you remember Malone?”
    “Of course. How is she?”
    “She’s fox-trotting with somebody else,” Mallard said.
    “Uh-oh. Gonna be number five?”
    “Could happen. Anyway, we’ll