Hidden Prey

here drinking, they worked in the mines . . .”
    “Nett Lake is an Indian reservation,” Reasons told Lucas, who said, “I know.”
    Spivak asked Lucas, “You used to come in here?”
    “Yeah, playing hockey. We were always going around looking for beer afterwards.”
    “You probably got a few here,” Spivak said. “Dad always thought that if you were old enough to skate, a little beer wouldn’t hurt you. When was this?”
    “Late seventies.”
    Spivak nodded. “I would’ve missed you—I was the sixties. Things were different back then . . . So are the Wild gonna do anything this year?”
     
    T HEY TALKED HOCKEY for a couple of minutes, until Nadya came back, and when she was seated, Reasons said to Spivak, using his formal cop explanatory voice, “About fifteen days ago, a Russian guy came in here and apparently got together with some people at a meeting here in your bar. We’d like to know what you remember about that.”
    Spivak frowned. “A Russian? I don’t remember a Russian specifically.”
    “He was a tough-looking guy in a leather jacket, heavy five-o’clock shadow, big square head like a milk carton,” Lucas said. “Looked like a mean sonofabitch.”
    “You were sure he was here?” Spivak asked uncertainly.
    “We got an American Express card receipt from here,” Reasons said. “For a hundred and forty-five dollars.”
    “Ohhh . . .” Spivak’s eyebrows went up again, but his eyes slid away. “Yeah. Okay. In fact, they were sitting right here. There must have been five or six guys. I didn’t know the guy was Russian, though.”
    “What’d they do?”
    Spivak shrugged: “Drank. Talked. In English, not Russian. What I remember was, when they were finished, they all tossed some money in a pot and the one guy, he must’ve been your Russian, collected the money, and then paid with his Amex. I mean, I was thinking it was sort of a scam, somebody would get stuck with an expense account when all the guys paid for themselves.”
    “We need specifics,” Lucas said. “Did you know any of them?”
    “No. Didn’t know a single one.” He frowned. “That’s a little unusual. This is mostly a town joint. But it happens. We get tourists, whatever. Fishermen on their way north to Canada, sometimes they meet up here.”
    “They were Americans,” Nadya said.
    “Yeah, I guess. They spoke English. They looked like they were from around here.”
    “Were they talking about their families, or their business, or what?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t know, I didn’t pay any attention. Let me think.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tipped his head back. After a moment, he opened his eyes and said, slowly, “Okay. When I was in here, most of the time it was the Russian guy and another guy who were doing thetalking. The guy in the leather jacket. The other guy was like a big lumberjack-looking guy, plaid shirt, big shoulders, red hair. The other guys, I don’t know—they looked like guys. One of them had a Green Bay hat.”
    “What is this?” Nadya asked Lucas.
    “Sports team hat,” Lucas said, watching Spivak, his eyes, listening to his voice. Spivak was lying to them for some reason.
    They pressed him, but the barkeep gave them nothing more. The people at the meeting were, he said, “just a bunch of guys. Didn’t disturb anybody, didn’t get drunk, came, drank, paid, and left. I wish I had more of them like that.”
    Lucas asked, “Who all was working that night. Could we get a list?”
    “Well, I guess. I’d have to go back and look,” he said reluctantly. “We don’t use everybody every night . . .”
    He checked his time cards and put together a list of phone numbers and addresses, and as he did, said, “You guys scared the shit out of me. I thought you were up here, I mean, I thought somebody had done something in the bar, that I didn’t know about. You know, raped somebody out back in the parking lot, or felt somebody up in the rest room. I thought I was gonna get sued.”
     
    T HEY LEFT HIM standing at the end of the bar next to his calculator and spiral notebook, and headed out.
    “Well, that was weird,” Lucas said, as they stood blinking in the sunshine.
    “I think we are not through with Mr. Spivak,” Nadya said, looking up at him.
    “You guys, uh . . .” Reasons smiled, turned his hands palms up. “I missed something, right?”
    “Unless he asked you while I was in the Setters,” Nadya said. To Lucas: “Did he ask