Phantom Prey

governor was a thin man, sleek, his hair lacquered in place, with delicate cheekbones and an aristocratic lip. He’d been reading the real estate ads in one of the weeklies, his stocking feet up on a mahogany file cabinet. The governor was the scion of one of Minnesota’s bigger fortunes, originally considered to be the runt of the litter, and now pretty much running the state and the family. Some said he thought they were the same thing. . . .
    His socks, Lucas observed, were a pale lavender with the thinnest of scarlet clocks. The governor cocked an eye at him and asked, “Is this gonna cause me trouble? Whatever it is?”
    “Probably the least amount of trouble of anything you’ve done today,” Lucas said, as he dropped into a leather armchair. “If you get assassinated this week, can I have those socks?”
    “No. We pass these down through the generations, to the oldest sons.”
    "C’mon. Where’d you get them?”
    “Ferragamo.” The governor folded the paper, dropped it in a wastebasket, and said, “The shit is about to hit the fan. The question is, will it hit before the next election?”
    “What shit?” Lucas asked. For one crazy moment, he thought the governor might be concerned about convention security.
    “The ethanol market is gonna drop dead,” the governor said. “Capacity is outrunning demand, and the big energy companies are moving up to the trough. A whole bunch of farmers who mortgaged the farm to build all these small plants, they’re gonna lose their shirts. Then they’ll want to know what I’m going to do about it.”
    Lucas shrugged. “That’s your problem. And the farmers’. Though it’s not your biggest problem.”
    “What’s my biggest problem?” The governor’s eyebrows went up.
    “The convention,” Lucas said. “The protesters are gonna trash the place, right down the hill from your office. If we quadrupled the security we’re planning, it wouldn’t be a quarter of what we need.”
    The governor frowned: “I don’t know. This is a pretty lefty state.”
    “The people causing the trouble aren’t lefties,” Lucas said, rapping his knuckles on the rosewood desk. “They’re vandals. Petty criminals. Jerkoffs. They wouldn’t care if the Blessed Virgin Mary showed up holding hands with Karl Marx. This is their Super Bowl, and it’s sixty-forty that they’re gonna tear us a new asshole.”
    The governor looked mildly impatient. “Is that what you came to tell me?”
    “No, no. Nobody listens anyway,” Lucas said, discouraged. “The planners believe we can count on the goodwill of the people; like the vandals are just another caucus. Fuckin’ morons.”
    “The people? Or the planners?”
    “The planners.”
    “Anyway . . .” The governor didn’t pay any more attention than anyone else, and his eyes strayed back to the stack of newspapers.
    “Anyway,” Lucas said, leaning forward, “this is something different. Do you know Alyssa Austin, Hunter Austin’s wife? Or widow, I guess?”
    “Yes.” The governor straightened around, picked a pair of black loafers off the floor, and slipped his feet into them, wiggling his toes. “I read about her kid. That’s awful. She’s dead, right?”
    “Ninety-nine percent,” Lucas said. “We cover Sunfish Lake on homicides, and we’ve got a new guy looking into it. He isn’t getting much. I’d like to be able to tell people that the governor asked me to poke around, as a personal favor, and that I had no choice but to say yes.”
    “So you won’t piss off the new guy. Or Rose Marie,” the governor said. The runt of the litter, but no dummy.
    “That’s right,” Lucas said.
    “Go ahead; I’ll cover for you,” the governor said. “I’ll be raising money there this summer, in Sunfish. Probably know half the people in town. So if you could settle it before then, that’d be good.”
    “Not a problem,” Lucas said.
    “Let them know that you’re out there at my suggestion,” the governor added. “Especially if you catch the killers.”
    Lucas nodded. “Ferragamo,” he said, and stood up. The audience was over.
    “Yup. You want a fashion tip?” The governor picked up another paper and checked the front page before turning back to the classifieds.
    “I always listen to fashion tips,” Lucas said. That was true; he did. He didn’t always follow them, but the governor had excellent taste.
    “You always want your socks and your pajamas to be slightly gay,” the governor said. “Not too