Night Prey

bratwurst at a Twins game.”
    “You gotta be kidding me.”
    The bartender shrugged, started a smile, thought better of it, and shrugged again. Coughed. “His time was up,” he said piously, running his rag in a circle. “You a friend of his?”
    “Jesus Christ, no. I’m looking for another guy. Carl knew him.”
    “Carl was an asshole,” the bartender said philosophically. He leaned one elbow on the bar. “You a cop?”
    “Yup.”
    The bartender looked around. There were seven other people in the bar, five sitting alone, looking at nothing at all, the other two with their heads hunched together so they could whisper. “Who’re you looking for?”
    “Randolph Leski? He used to hang out here.”
    The bartender’s eye shifted down the bar, then back to Lucas. He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Does this shit bring in money?”
    “Sometimes. You get on the list. . . .”
    “Randy’s about eight stools down,” he muttered. “On the other side of the next two guys.”
    Lucas nodded, and a moment later, leaned back a few inches and glanced to his right. Looking at the bartender again, he said quietly, “The guy I’m looking for is big as you.”
    “You mean fat,” the bartender said.
    “Hefty.”
    The bartender tilted his head. “Randy had a tumor. They took out most of his gut. He can’t keep the weight on no more. They say he eats a pork chop, he shits sausages. They don’t digest.”
    Lucas looked down the bar again, said, “Give me a draw, whatever.”
    The bartender nodded, stepped away. Lucas took a business card out of his pocket, rolled out a twenty and the business card. “Thanks. What’s your name?”
    “Earl. Stupella.”
    “Carl’s . . .”
    “Brother.”
    “Maybe you hear something serious sometime, you call me,” Lucas said. “Keep the change.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS PICKED UP the glass of beer and wandered down the bar. Stopped, did a double take. The thin man on the stool turned his head: loose skin hung around his face and neck like a basset hound’s, but Randy Leski’s mean little pig-eyes peered out of it.
    “Randy,” Lucas said. “As I live and breathe.”
    Leski shook his head once, as though annoyed by a fly in a kitchen. Leski ran repair scams, specializing in the elderly. Lucas had made him a hobby. “Go away. Please.”
    “Jesus. Old friends,” Lucas said, spreading his arms. The other talk in the bar died. “You’re looking great, man. You been on a diet?”
    “Kiss my ass, Davenport. Whatever you want, I don’t got it.”
    “I’m looking for Junky Doog.”
    Leski sat a little straighter. “Junky? He cut on somebody?”
    “I just need to talk to him.”
    Leski suddenly giggled. “Christ, old Junky.” He made a gesture as if wiping a tear away from his eyes. “I tell you, the last I heard of him, he was working out at a landfill in Dakota County.”
    “Landfill?”
    “Yeah. The dump. I don’t know which one, I just hear this from some guys. Christ, born in a junkyard, the guy gets sent to the nuthouse. When they kick him out of there, he winds up in a dump. Some people got all the luck, huh?” Leski started laughing, great phlegm-sucking wheezes.
    Lucas looked at him for a while, waiting for the wheezing to subside, then nodded.
    Leski said, “I hear you’re back.”
    “Yeah.”
    Leski took a sip of his beer, grimaced, looked down at it, and said, “I heard when you got shot last winter. First time I been in a Catholic church since we were kids.”
    “A church?”
    “I was praying my ass off that you’d fuckin’ croak,” Leski said. “After a lot of pain.”
    “Thanks for thinking of me,” Lucas said. “You still run deals on old people?”
    “Go hump yourself.”
    “You’re a breath of fresh air, Randy . . . Hey.” Leski’s old sport coat had an odd crinkle, a lump. Lucas touched his side. “Are you carrying?”
    “C’mon, leave me alone, Davenport.”
    Randy Leski never carried: it was like an article of his religion. “What the hell happened?”
    Leski was a felon. Carrying could put him inside. He looked down at his beer. “You seen my neighborhood?”
    “Not lately.”
    “Bad news. Bad news, Davenport. Glad my mother didn’t live to see it. These kids, Davenport, they’ll kill you for bumping into them,” Leski said, tilting his head sideways to look at Lucas. His eyes were the color of water. “I swear to God, I was in Pansy’s the other night, and this asshole kid starts giving some shit to this