Hidden Prey

by Jesus on a Wednesday evening and then walk a hundred feet across the way and get a dirty magazine; you could buy aJenn-Air range or a Sub-Zero refrigerator or a used paperback, a homemade quilt or a doughnut, a chain saw or an ice-cream cone or a pack of Gitanes or Players. There was an ample supply of bars, ranging from places where you’d take your aged Aunt Sally to outright dives.
    Lucas had always thought it might be the best main drag in Minnesota, and maybe the whole Midwest. He’d visited the place a dozen times between eighth grade and his senior year in high school, as a hockey player, and remembered with some fondness the brutally cold nights after the games when he and a half dozen friends went out looking for underage beer and hot women. They’d never gone home dry, and, as far as Lucas knew, nobody had ever gotten laid, despite expansive and ingenious lies about close calls, about barmaids and Virginia cheerleaders.
    They arrived a little before ten o’clock in the morning. He was happy to see the street was still intact.
     
    S PIVAK ’ S T AP WAS halfway down the ranks from cocktail lounge to dive. They parked in front, and got out, the sun hot on their backs despite the cool air, and Nadya said, “More signs.”
    “What’s this thing you’ve got for signs?” Reasons asked.
    “I have nothing for signs, but there are so many,” she said. “Most people here, most men, have signs on their shirts. Why do you need so many signs?”
    Reasons said, “Beats the hell out of me.”
    Lucas looked up at the front of the bar. “This guy—his name is Spivak?”
    Reasons had called the owner the night before, and told him that they were coming, but not the purpose of the visit. He said, “Right. Anthony Spivak.”
    Nadya asked, “He will have a toilet here, yes?” and Lucas said, “Yes,” and they followed Reasons inside.
     
    S PIVAK ’ S WAS an unembarrassed beer joint, with clunky plank floors, a long mahogany bar, jars of pickled eggs and pigs’ feet, two dozen booths with high backs upholstered in red leatherette, an area near a jukebox where you could dance, if you were so inclined, a couple of stuffed muskies, and an old, six-foot-long painting of a plump pink nude woman behind the bar, holding a strategically placed white ostrich feather. Lucas remembered both the painting and the feather.
    Spivak was sitting at the end of the bar with a spiral notebook, a calculator, and a beer. He was a broad, short man, with a square pink face, square yellow teeth, and white hair growing out of his head, ears, and nose. He had a fat nose that looked as though it had been broken a couple of times. A blond woman with tired eyes stood behind the bar, taking glasses out of a stainless-steel sink, wiping them dry with a bar towel. Two guys in ball caps and plaid shirts sat in one of the booths, talking over their beers.
    When they walked in, Spivak looked up, closed the spiral notebook, and asked, “Are you the folks from Duluth?”
    “Yeah.” Reasons nodded. He introduced Lucas and Nadya. Lucas raised a hand and Nadya nodded.
    “Come on in the back,” Spivak said. They followed him past the rest rooms, which had signs that said SETTERS and POINTERS , and which had to be explained to Nadya, who then disappeared into Setters; and then into the back, where four long tables were scattered among sixteen chairs in a party room. They took a table and Spivak cleared some chairs and said, “Could I get you something—on the house?”
    “Ah, no, thanks,” Reasons said. “We needed to talk to you about something that happened up here last week, but we’ve got to wait until Nadya gets back.”
    “She’s got an accent,” Spivak said, as they settled in at the table. “Where she from?”
    “Russia.”
    “Russia.” The corners of his mouth turned down as his eyebrows went up. “Huh. She’s not a cop?”
    “Yeah, she is,” said Lucas. “She’s part of this whole . . . We’ll tell you about it in a minute.” He looked around: “I used to come here as a kid—it hasn’t changed much. Did the can always say Setters and Pointers?”
    Spivak said, “A long time ago, it used to say Bucks and Does, but then in the seventies, some Indian guys said ‘Bucks’ was racist, so my dad changed it.”
    “But bucks means . . . deer bucks, right?”
    “Well, yeah, but, you know, it was the seventies, Jane Fonda, all that,” Spivak said. “And we used to get quite a few guys from Nett Lake in