Mind Prey

Don’t tell me.” She shook her head unconvincingly.
    “See, there was this guy goes to work, gets there late, and the boss jumps him…”
    “C’mon, don’t tell me,” Sherrill said.
    “All right. If you really don’t want to hear it,” he said. “Let me get this printout.”
    He came back a minute later with the printout and she said, “All right, let’s hear it. The joke.”
    Black dropped the printout next to the microfilm reader and went on, “…so the boss says, ‘Get the fuck out of here. You’re fired. I don’t want to see your ass again.’ So the guy drags out the door, really upset, gets in his car, and halfway home he’s t-boned at an intersection by a teenager. Trashes his car, and the kid’s got no insurance. Jesus. This is turning into the worst day of his life. So his car is towed, and the guy has to take the bus home—and when he gets there, eleven o’clock in the morning, he hears sounds coming from the bedroom. Like sex. Moaning, groaning, sheets being scratched. And he sneaks back there, and there’s his wife, having sex with his best friend.”
    “No shit,” said Sherrill.
    “And the guy freaks out,” Black said. “He yells at his wife, ‘Get out of here, you slut. Get your clothes, get dressed, and get out. Don’t ever come back or I’ll beat your ass into the floor.’ And he turns to his best friend and says, ‘As for you—Bad dog! Bad dog!’”
    “That’s really fuckin’ funny,” Sherrill said; she turned away to smile.
    “So don’t laugh,” Black said, knowing she liked it. And on the top of the printout he wrote “John Mail.”
     
    I RV WAS A broad-shouldered old man with a crown of fine white hair, with a pink spot in the middle of it. His nose was pitted and red, as though he might like his whiskey too much. He wore a faded flannel shirt and canvas trousers, and sat on a park bench next to his dock. A cash box sat on the bench beside him. “What can I do you for?” he asked when Lucas rolled up.
    “Are you Irv?” Off to the left, there was a scorched stone foundation with raw dirt inside, and nothing else.
    “Yeah.” Irv squinted up at him. “You a cop?”
    “Yeah, Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “What do you think? Will you get it back together?”
    “I suppose.” Irv rubbed his large nose with the back of one hand. “Don’t have much else to do, and the insurance’ll probably get me halfway there.”
    Lucas walked over to the foundation. There wasn’t much evidence of fire, except for soot on the stones. “Got it cleaned up in a hurry.”
    The old man shrugged. “Wasn’t anything in it but wood and glass, and a few minnie tanks. It burned like a torch. What didn’t burn, they took out with a front-end loader. The whole kit and caboodle was out of here in five minutes.” He took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses on his flannel shirt. “Goddamnit.”
    Lucas turned away, inspected the foundation some more, and, when Irv got his glasses straight, walked back and handed him the flier. “Did you see this guy in here last week?”
    Irv tipped his head back so he could look at the flier with his bifocals. Then he looked up and said, “Is this the sonofabitch that burned me out?”
    “Was he in here?”
    Irv nodded. “I believe he was. He doesn’t look quite like this—the mouth is wrong—but he looks something like it, and I wondered what he was doing when he came in here. He wasn’t any fisherman; he didn’t know how to start the kicker. And it was cold that day.”
    “When was this?” Lucas asked.
    “Two days ago—the day the rain came in. He came back in the rain.”
    “You remember his name?”
    Irv scratched his chin. “No, no, I don’t. I’d have his name off his driver’s license, in my receipt box. If I had a receipt box anymore.” He looked up at Lucas, the sun glittering off his glasses. “This is the one that took the Manette girl and her daughters, isn’t it?”
    “Could be,” Lucas said. And he thought: Yes, it is.
     
    J OHN M AIL CALLED Lucas at one o’clock in the afternoon. “Here I am, figuring the cops are coming down on me at any minute. I mean, I’m buying my food a day at a time, so I don’t waste any. Where are you guys?”
    “We’re coming,” Lucas growled. The voice was beginning to get to him: he was looking at his watch as he talked, counting the seconds. “We’re taking bets on how long you last. Nobody’s out as far as a week. We can’t give that bet