Hidden Prey

goddamn bar fight, kind of, except in a restaurant,” Lucas said.
    “And except that it’s in a big restaurant in the middle of the morning and nobody’s drunk and everybody’s bleeding,” the patrolman said.
    “Won’t do anybody any good if it gets out,” Lucas said. “Why don’t we just do something?”
    “Disappear it?” the sergeant suggested.
    “That would be good.”
    “We oughta call in and see what they want to do,” the patrolman said cautiously. A new guy, Lucas thought.
    “Why don’t you call the chief directly,” Lucas said to the sergeant. “Go off the record—there’s been a lot of shit since last night, and we’re trying to handle it. Nobody wants charges. What’s the good of an assault charge against a woman whose husband just got murdered?”
    The cop nodded, looked at Nadya and then at Reasons, and then at his partner. “I’ll make the call right here. Nothing happened.”
    “Atta boy,” Andreno said.
    “Who the fuck are you?” the partner asked.
    “BCA undercover,” Lucas said. “Pretend you never saw him.”
    “What about my shirt?” the waitress asked. “It’s new, it’s probably ruined.”
    Lucas asked, “What’s the biggest tip you ever got for coffee and waffles?”
    “Maybe five dollars.”
    “Brace yourself; your ship just came in.”
    She nodded, looked down at her blouse, and up at Lucas: “All right. Hope it’s like one of them supertankers.”
     
    T HE D ULUTH COPS took Reasons out, and Andreno said, “You got a cut on your nose. You need another napkin.”
    “That woman was like a hurricane of fingernails,” Lucas said. He touched his nose, and it stung. “I hope she didn’t give me something.”
    “You mean, like the clap?” Andreno said. He was having a pretty good time, now.
    “What is this clap?” Nadya asked. She had tears running down through her makeup, and Lucas shook his head at Andreno, said, “Let’s get her to her room.”
     
    A NDRENO PROVED to be expert at gently cleaning and bandaging wounds, and he did both Nadya and Lucas, using Band-Aids from Lucas’s Dopp kit. “Leave them on until the blood dries—tomorrow would be good—and then wash them off. You’ll still have grooves, both of you.”
    “I’m not leaving it on my fuckin’ nose,” Lucas said. “I’d rather bleed.”
    “What is this groove?” Nadya asked. She’d become quiet, somber after the fight.
    “Fingernail cuts,” Andreno said. “Nasty. I always hated to break up fights between women. When women fight, civilization goes right out the window. They don’t know how to play-fight, like guys. They go right for the eyes.”
    “I hit her hard, with those napkins,” Nadya said, with just a sliver of satisfaction.
    “Yes, you did,” Lucas said. “She wasn’t exactly a lightweight, either. I think I fucked up my back, getting her off you.”
    “Two Aleves,” Andreno said. “Get a couple for Nadya.”
     
    N ADYA WAS RELUCTANT , but they went back to the restaurant when Andreno complained that he hadn’t had breakfast. The manager looked at them with trepidation, but the waitress was right there: Lucas had given her a hundred-dollar bill. After they ordered, Andreno said, “Tell me everything. I don’t know shit.”
    Lucas told him. Andreno was bright, and a longtime street cop. When he finished, Andreno said, “What you need is to finish those genealogies. If there are four families, somebody in the families is gonna know who the killer is.”
    “Spivak might know,” Lucas said. “That’s not doing us any good.”
    “I know, but the more you nail down the families, the more you bring up the possibility that they’re all going to jail on spy charges. Somebody, somewhere along the line, is gonna crack.”
    “We haven’t even talked with the Svobodas yet,” Lucas said. “Put some bullshit on a woman in their shop . . .”
    “The thing I keep thinking about is those birth certificates from the ancestors. The fake ones. Maybe there’s some way to go through the vital records and pull everybody who makes that claim.”
    “I don’t think they’d be computerized that far back,” Lucas said. “Maybe they would. I can check.”
    They thought about that for a minute, then Nadya said, “Remember when we talk to this horse-woman, the one who is a barmaid at Spivak’s?”
    “Yeah?”
    “If I remember, she said that one of the men at the table was very old. We do not have any very old people in our families. Is there a way